The Spider-Man Movies You Never Saw — and Why They Were Scrapped

There is a Mount Rushmore of unmade superhero movies, and it is basically four Spider-Men. Across four decades, studios kept announcing bigger, crazier plans for Peter Parker... and then quietly pulling the plug. Here is the wild, messy, very inside-baseball tour of every cancelled Spider-Man movie that almost happened.

The 80s Cannon era: Spider-Man vs. the horror movie that freaked out Stan Lee

Back in 1985, Marvel handed the rights to Cannon Films with a clock ticking: make a Spider-Man movie by 1990. Cannon first eyed Tobe Hooper (fresh off Invaders from Mars and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2), then pivoted to Joseph Zito after his success with Invasion U.S.A.

Zito hired The Outer Limits creator Leslie Stevens, who turned in a story so off-brand Stan Lee blew a gasket. The pitch: Peter Parker gets injected with a radioactive serum by a sinister scientist and mutates into a giant, hairy, eight-legged human-tarantula. He refuses to join a mutant master-race and ends up brawling through a lab full of monsters. Hardcore horror fans might call that a good time. Stan Lee called it blasphemy, demanded a new script, and got one.

Ted Newsom and John Brancato wrote a more traditional origin with Peter mentored by Doctor Octopus. An attempt to unlock the Fifth Force via a Cyclotron deforms both of them, setting up the Ock showdown. Menahem Golan and Barney Cohen tweaked that draft. Cannon set aside roughly $15–20 million, and while nothing got officially cast, the early wish list was wild: Tom Cruise as Peter, Bob Hoskins as Doc Ock, Katherine Hepburn or Lauren Bacall as Aunt May, Peter Cushing as a kindly scientist, and Stan Lee himself sniffing around J. Jonah Jameson.

Then Superman accidentally killed Spider-Man. Cannon released Superman IV: The Quest for Peace in 1987, it bombed hard, the money dried up, and Spider-Man’s budget got slashed to $10 million. Zito bailed over creative differences, the script went from damaged to unsalvageable, and the project just flatlined. Cue the rights changing hands.

James Cameron’s R-rated Spider-Man that almost starred Leo

In 1990, Carolco Pictures bought the rights from Golan for $5 million and hired James Cameron to write, direct, and produce a darker, harder Spider-Man. Variety said Cameron wrote a script; in reality, his name ended up on a reworked version of the Newsom/Brancato draft. What Cameron actually delivered a few months later was a 57-page "scriptment" that leaked years ago and reads like an R-rated, pre-Nolan superhero about-face.

His plan: Electro and Sandman as the main villains, but renamed Carlton Strand and Boyd. Sandman becomes a sand-creature via a botched atomic experiment; citywide blackouts and odd magnetic surges plague New York; the climax is on top of the World Trade Center; and Peter reveals his identity to Mary Jane. The tone? Violent, profanity-laced, and yes, a graphic sex scene on the Brooklyn Bridge. This was not your friendly neighborhood anything.

Cameron’s pie-in-the-sky casting board went like this: Leonardo DiCaprio as Peter, Nikki Cox or Robyn Lively as MJ, Jim Carrey as Norman Osborn, Lance Henriksen as Electro, Michael Biehn as Sandman, Bill Paxton as the Burglar, Maggie Smith as Aunt May, with Michael Douglas or R. Lee Ermey as J. Jonah Jameson. Arnold Schwarzenegger was set for a cameo as Dr. Otto Octavius to tee up Doc Ock later. (Carrey went on to be the Riddler; Arnold went full pun as Mr. Freeze.)

Other writers took swings: Ethan Wiley did a hallucinatory, Kafka-esque bite-of-the-spider trip; Neil Ruttenberg staged a violent New York Stock Exchange hijacking; Frank LaLoggia opened on cash raining down on Manhattan. Carolco extended Golan’s rights through 1996, but the company went bankrupt and yanked the plug in 1992. A long legal headache followed. By 1999, Columbia/Sony had the rights, Sam Raimi signed on, and Tobey Maguire’s trilogy took off. If parts of Cameron’s vision feel familiar, that’s because Raimi eventually brought Sandman into the mix.

Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man 4: sets, storyboards, and then the brakes

Spider-Man 3 hit theaters on May 4, 2007, cost around $250 million, and hauled in $894 million worldwide. Critics were mixed, fans were salty, but the math favored a fourth movie. Development on Spider-Man 4 kicked off in 2008 with Raimi back and Tobey Maguire and Kirsten Dunst expected to return.

Sony contacted David Koepp (who wrote Raimi’s first Spider-Man); he passed, so James Vanderbilt came aboard in October 2008. Pulitzer winner David Lindsay-Abaire revised. In March 2009, Sony publicly planted a flag: May 6, 2011. By fall, Gary Ross was rewriting again. And then the real problem: Raimi just could not find a story he believed in. He already loathed how Spider-Man 3 turned out, saying he was pushed to shoehorn Venom in when Sandman and New Goblin were enough. He wasn’t going to do that again.

There were cool plans. Raimi wanted to finally unleash Dylan Baker’s Dr. Curt Connors as the Lizard. John Malkovich emerged as the primary villain, the Vulture, after a brief Ben Kingsley flirtation. Anne Hathaway was in talks to play Felicia Hardy/Black Cat; Kate Beckinsale even did a read with Tobey Maguire, and storyboard artist Jeffrey Henderson says Raimi asked him to board using Angelina Jolie’s face because he was hoping to land her. Raimi’s good-luck charm Bruce Campbell was set to appear as Mysterio in an opening montage where Spidey steamrolls D-list crooks like Shocker, Prowler, Stilt-Man, and Rhino, then drags a spluttering Mysterio into a precinct. There was even a gag version at Aunt May’s apartment that would have turned into a glorious Bruce Campbell ambush.

Then came the corporate asks. In 2010, Sony wanted the movie in 3D to chase Avatar’s post-conversion gold rush and even nudged Raimi to meet with James Cameron about the tech. Raimi declined, saying he’d never shot 3D and would need serious extra prep. Combine that with script issues, and the director walked rather than make something he didn’t love.

"It really was the most amicable and undramatic of breakups: It was simply that we had a deadline and I couldn’t get the story to work on a level that I wanted it to work. I was very unhappy with Spider-Man 3, and I wanted to make Spider-Man 4 to end on a very high note, the best Spider-Man of them all. But I couldn’t get the script together in time, due to my own failings, and I said to Sony, 'I don’t want to make a movie that is less than great, so I think we shouldn’t make this picture. Go ahead with your reboot, which you’ve been planning anyway.' And [Sony co-chairman] Amy Pascal said, 'Thank you. Thank you for not wasting the studio’s money, and I appreciate your candor.'"

What would the movie have been? Henderson says it opened with Vulture working as a black-ops scavenger-for-hire, earning his nickname for "leaving nothing but bones behind." He’s framed, locked up, then breaks out and unleashes hell. With MJ out of the picture, Peter has grown into the role; the back half was a twisty gauntlet with a big, brutal finale that put him in more danger than ever. Pieces of that DNA migrated elsewhere: Lizard popped up in The Amazing Spider-Man and Vulture became the heavy in Spider-Man: Homecoming. Tobey came back in No Way Home, which only cranked up Spider-Man 4 rumors again.

"I’ve come to realize after making Doctor Strange that anything is possible, really anything in the Marvel universe, any team-ups. I love Tobey. I love Kirsten Dunst. I think all things are possible. I don’t really have a story or a plan... Even if it wasn’t a Spider-Man movie, I’d love to work with Tobey again, in a different role."

In July 2023, Thomas Haden Church (Sandman) fanned the flames:

"There’s always been some kind of... I’ve heard rumors... that Sam Raimi was going to do another [Spider-Man movie] with Tobey and if that happens, I would probably campaign to maybe at least do a cameo."

And then, in April 2024, Raimi told Deadline he hasn’t started work on Spider-Man 4 and hasn’t discussed it with Tobey Maguire.

The Amazing Spider-Man sequels that got rebooted out of existence

In 2013, Sony planted two flags for follow-ups to The Amazing Spider-Man 2: June 10, 2016 and May 4, 2018. The fourth never really moved, but Andrew Garfield was under contract for a third, Paul Giamatti said he’d return as Rhino, and Marc Webb was announced to direct again. A month later, Webb stepped aside. The script bounced through versions by Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman. Then Marvel Studios and Sony teamed up for a fresh reboot in 2015, and Amazing 3 and 4 vanished. There were also early talks of a Black Cat/Silver Sable spin-off with Gina Prince-Bythewood attached, which didn’t stick.

Drew Goddard’s Sinister Six: the villains’ movie that almost happened

Also in 2013, Sony set up a Sinister Six film with Drew Goddard. It was designed as a prelude to The Amazing Spider-Man 3 and would have picked up right after TASM2. Harry Osborn assembles a new lineup: Doctor Octopus, Mysterio, Kraven, Rhino, Vulture, with Green Goblin himself leading the team. The plan kept Andrew Garfield as Spidey, brought back Dane DeHaan’s Goblin and Paul Giamatti’s Rhino, and reportedly eyed Matthew McConaughey for Vulture. If you remember the TASM2 end credits showing off villain gear, that was meant as a breadcrumb trail.

Goddard wanted to honor the comics by pulling Sandman and Electro into the group, but the hook was a redemption arc for the rogues, with very little Peter Parker on screen. Sony even stamped a date on it: November 11, 2016. When Marvel’s new Spider-Man era started in 2015, Sinister Six got punted and then quietly buried.

In 2018, Goddard said his script could still work someday, and Amy Pascal said the studio wanted to use it somehow, maybe with Tom Holland. Then Pascal left Sony for Universal in 2019. More recently, after Madame Web face-planted and other Spider-adjacent projects struggled, Sony has reportedly cooled on spin-offs that don’t prominently feature Peter, leaving Sinister Six back in the deep freeze.

El Muerto: Bad Bunny’s Spider-verse detour that didn’t make it

Once Sinister Six was off the table, Sony pivoted to El Muerto, a deep-cut Luchador who first fights Spider-Man and then teams with him against the godlike El Dorado. After Bullet Train, Bad Bunny signed on to star, took the stage at CinemaCon 2022 to hype it, and the movie was dated for January 12, 2024. Jonas Cuaron signed on to direct, with Garreth Dunnet-Alcocer scripting.

The 2023 WGA strike jammed development, rewrites stacked up, production schedules slipped, and combined with Bad Bunny’s touring calendar and creative differences, he exited in July 2023. Sony tried reviving it in January 2024 as a standalone, but the project stalled again. Chalk it up as another one for the never-made column.

The lesson studios keep ignoring

If there’s a throughline to all of this, it’s studios locking in release dates years out before the script is actually there. That’s how you end up with a lot of concept art and no movie. At least one studio head has said the quiet part out loud: James Gunn has promised DC won’t start shooting without a finished script. More of that, please.

As for Marvel’s live-action Spider-Man, all eyes are on the next Tom Holland entry — reportedly titled Spider-Man: Brand New Day — which is said to be filming in the UK for a July 31, 2026 release. That one isn’t likely to vanish.

Okay, your turn: if you could resurrect exactly one of these and actually watch it, which ticket are you buying?