Spider-Man is one of the world’s most beloved pop culture icons, with a movie franchise that has grossed nearly 9 billion dollars since 2002. That’s not counting the amount of money Spidey has made via licensing, toys, etc. over the years. Yet despite the character being around since 1962 and being a certifiable cash-cow, it took 40 years for him to get a big-budget Hollywood blockbuster. But in the mid-80s, a Spider-Man movie was in pre-production, via Cannon Films, and even got an announcement trailer in 1985. You can watch this rare trailer for the Spider-Man movie that never was right here, via the YouTube channel LIVE ROUNDZ: The Action Channel:
So what exactly happened to this Spider-Man movie? And why did this trailer look so cheap, even by the standards of the time? Well, the 1980s was a very different era for comic book movies. Despite the massive success of Richard Donner’s Superman in 1978, studios just didn’t think people would flock to movie theaters to see their favorite iconic heroes on the big screen. This is despite the ’80s being a robust sales period for Marvel Comics. Spider-Man titles alone in this era sold a now-unheard of 800,000 issues monthly. And he even had two separate cartoons on the air. And yet the only movie studio to take an interest in the property was Cannon Films, a notoriously low-budget operation. Along with the announcement trailer, there was also a poster, which had Spidey swinging through space, for reasons.
So who’s the guy in the Spidey outfit in this trailer and poster? He’s stuntman and occasional actor Scott Leva. Cannon was determined he was going to be their Peter Parker, mainly because he was affordable. Christopher Reeve was an unknown when he got the Superman role after all. The thinking was that maybe lightning would strike twice. Marvel Comics was so sure Leva was going to be their big-screen Spidey, they put the actor in costume for the March 1985 cover of Amazing Spider-Man #262. Readers who bought that issue back in the day really thought this meant Spider-Man was actually in production already.
Fun fact; Leva did eventually get to play Spider-Man in a Marvel movie. Well, sort of. He was a stunt coordinator on the original X-Men in 2000. As a prank, he ran on set in his Spider-Man costume while they were filming an action scene. This prank made its way to the blooper reel for the first X-Men DVD back in the day. So, in a way, he still is our first canonical Marvel movie Spidey.
The original director for Spider-Man was going to be Tobe Hooper, of Texas Chainsaw Massacre and Poltergeist fame. Why did Cannon want a horror director for Spidey? Because the owners of Cannon Films didn’t really know what Spider-Man was, besides it being a famous property. They thought it was about a man who transforms into a spider-monster, like The Fly. Eventually, Tobe Hooper left the project. Director Joe Zito, famous for Missing in Action and Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter was hired. No shade to Mr. Zito (his Jason movie is still among the best ones), but this called for a young Robert Zemeckis or even Spielberg.
The Cannon Films version of Spider-Man originally had a budget of $15-20 million. And that was pretty decent for a genre movie back then. But after the failure of Cannon Films’ Superman IV: The Quest for Peace and Masters of the Universe, the budget was slashed to $10 million. Even in the ’80s, that was too small for a movie of this scale. Zito quit, and the whole project stalled out. Cannon Films went under, and eventually, Columbia Pictures/Sony got the rights. The rest, as they say, is history. But this trailer is a glimpse into a time when no one saw the real potential of comic books as big-budget tentpole films. A truly different era indeed.