March 26, 2004
Spiderman Sequels All Set
Not only has the studio just moved up the release date for Spider-Man 2 from July 2 to June 30 to get a jump on the competition, but Sony suits are feeling so good about the webslinger's box-office potential that it's staked out May 4, 2007 for a third installment that hasn't even been shot yet. And many more could be on the way.
In hopes of building a franchise that will give James Bond a run for his money, Sony has inked principals Tobey Maguire, Kirsten Dunst and director Sam Raimi for the third big-screen go-round.
Meantime, the studio is keen on making Spidey 2 the top-grossing movie of the year. To that end, Sony is now unleashing the Marvel superhero on a Wednesday, two days earlier than previously announced, to take advantage of the Fourth of July holiday weekend.
"When you have an event movie that is so widely-anticipated, it makes sense to give it as wide a berth as possible during the lucrative summer season," said Jeff Blake, vice chairman of Sony Pictures Entertainment.
The original Spider-Man spun all kinds of records when it hit theaters in May 2002, setting the benchmark for best-ever Friday-Sunday tally, raking in an astounding $115 million on its way to a worldwide haul of more than $800 million.
Sony has reportedly pumped $200 million into producing the sequel, not counting the inevitably saturation-level marketing campaign, which kicked into gear Wednesday with Sony's presentation at the ShoWest Convention in Las Vegas, Hollywood's annual confab for exhibitors and distributors. Sony capped things off with a seven-minute snippet of Spidey 2 and the latest theatrical trailer.
The sequel picks up two years after the close of the first film. The conflicted Peter Parker attempts to pull a Superman II and ditch his alter ego to get together with would-be sweetie, Mary Jane Watson, only to be forced back into the tights by a new nemesis, the multi-tentacled Dr. Octopus.
According to sources, the new trailer includes a Spidey-Doc Ock confrontation, plus an action sequence in which our friendly neighborhood arachnophile stops a train from plummeting off its tracks by using his body and web-spinning skills as a brake.
One attendee tells E! Online that exhibitors went wild over the trailer. Likewise, movie-geek Website IGN FilmForce (filmforce.ign.com) issued a fawning review of the sneak peek, reading in part, "The people who put this trailer together deserve an Academy Award for Most Intense Two Minutes."
And that's just the way filmmakers want it. "We realized that we had set the bar extremely high with the first movie," Avi Arad, head of Marvel Studios, told USA Today. "We decided that the best shot in the first movie would have to be the worst shot in the second one. Everything had to improve."
To that end, the studio upped the ante by upping the budget, bringing in a new baddie, Alfred Molina's Dr. Otto Octavius, aka Dr. Octopus, and revamping the special effects and stuntwork, including vertigo-inducing shots of Spider-Man slinging and scaling across the Big Apple's skyline.
"New York is a big part of the comic," said producer Laura Ziskin. "It's a much bigger character in this movie."
Ziskin also revealed that she and Sony execs have already had discussions about doing as many as six Spider-Man movies.
"It's hard to explain how much everyone believes in the project," says Ziskin. "I'm trying to get my mind around the third film, and the studio is already looking ahead to the sixth, and the second one isn't out yet. But I believe Spider-Man can do something that hasn't been done in the movies."
But Maguire, who joined the film's other stars for the ShoWest show-off, indicated he wasn't thinking that far ahead.
"Are they really thinking that far out?" he asked with a laugh. "I'm just trying to figure what I'll be doing tomorrow."