Beaks here...
It was over a decade ago that this website breathlessly reported every single rumor surrounding Sony's highly-anticipated big-screen take on SPIDER-MAN. Search through the archives and you'll find that just about every A-list director was alleged to be in the running at one point or another. And at the time, one of the most intriguing possibilities was David Fincher, who'd just blown moviegoers' minds with the indelible FIGHT CLUB (still one of the ballsiest studio films ever made).
So why didn't Fincher get the gig? Probably because he wanted no part of an origin story. io9 spoke with the director at THE GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO junket, and here's what he had to say about his proposed SPIDER-MAN film.
My impression what Spider-Man could be is very different from what Sam [Raimi] did or what Sam wanted to do. I think the reason he directed that movie was because he wanted to do the Marvel comic superhero. I was never interested in the genesis story. I couldn’t get past a guy getting bit by a red and blue spider. It was just a problem… It was not something that I felt I could do straight-faced. I wanted to start with Gwen Stacy and the Green Goblin, and I wanted to kill Gwen Stacy.
The title sequence of the movie that I was going to do was going to be a ten minute — basically a music video, an opera, which was going to be the one shot that took you through the entire Peter Parker [backstory]. Bit by a radioactive spider, the death of Uncle Ben, the loss of Mary Jane, and [then the movie] was going to begin with Peter meeting Gwen Stacy. It was a very different thing, it wasn’t the teenager story. It was much more of the guy who’s settled into being a freak.
Sony also considered Fincher for the franchise reboot a couple of years ago, but ultimately went with Marc Webb. I'm looking forward to Webb's film, but I kinda dig Fincher's idea of a musical prologue dispensing with the origin story. What do you think?
