(c) 2007 Sony Pictures
SPIDER-MAN 3
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Interviews: AVI ARAD, LAURA ZISKIN, & GRANT CURTIS SPIN TALES OF 'SPIDER-MAN 3'
Producers talk about plot changes, SFX, and the Vulture?
Published 5/3/2007
With SPIDER-MAN 3 opening this weekend, all comic books fans are more than ready to hand out hard earned bucks to see the latest web swinging installment. Producers Avi Arad, Laura Ziskin, and Grant Curtis couldn’t be happier with the franchise they have created and maintained over the last seven years, but they are a bit weary and not sure if there will be a SPIDER-MAN 4 yet. iF MAGAZINE sat down with this uber-talented production team and got the inside line on the villain and script changes to SPIDER-MAN 3 and found out just how much power the fan community wields over the people making the movies.
iF MAGAZINE: These movies always seem to be bigger and better. What kind of effort goes into topping the previous films?
AVI ARAD: The idea of making number three and four and it can be tough. You never sit around and say, ‘let’s spend less money’. The idea is to top it from a story standpoint. My favorite thing to say is to beat up Peter Parker and see how much he can take and still stay a hero in spite of what Sam Raimi is doing to him. In order to do that, you have to expand the storylines and find new villains and new issues and take his love life and make it even more complex and more sophisticated, and in order to do that you have to make a bigger movie. If you add an extra villain then it’s not only an extra storyline, but our villains tend to be pretty demanding in terms of CGI or costuming or what have you, so inevitably you make it bigger. But if you look at 2 verses 3, dollar for dollar, just in terms of the size of the movie I think we were very successful being incredibly efficient getting so much more for not that much more. I think it worked because we had a good story; these characters didn’t feel wasted in the story. We just created a bigger epic.
LAURA ZISKIN: I think there were a couple of things that went into the complexity of the story. Both on SPIDER-MAN 2 and SPIDER-MAN 3, we all did consciously say that we needed to top ourselves. I think for us as filmmakers its not going to be an interesting endeavor or a challenge for us if we don’t. In terms of what we think the audience expects, we jokingly said that they don’t expect less. We presume that they want more. The story was complicated by a basic narrative idea that Sam and Ivan [Raimi] had that was critical to the tale, which was the relationship between Peter and Harry and the fact that there had to be a battle of two against one at the end. So, that necessitated two villains, and so a lot of discussion in the development of the movie was that we knew one of the villains would be Sandman, which was the character we wanted to create visually for the action front of the movie. Then, we also were very interested in exploring Peter’s dark side, and that seemed thematically right for the story, which then led us obviously to the second villain being Venom. The requirement of the narrative was that Harry and Peter had to have a certain resolution, which required Peter needing help.
iF: Sam Raimi has said that he didn’t want to include Venom in the movie, so how did you persuade him to do it?
ZISKIN: A lot through the interest in exploring Peter’s dark side, I think that inevitably led to Venom.
ARAD: Sam is a big SPIDER-MAN fan as everyone knows and Venom was a later Spider-man character. Initially the Eddie Brock of the story, Sam didn’t know enough about it, and as he got educated about it we caught a break because the Sandman story is much richer in the movie than it is in the books -- he is not just a goon with an affliction. Eddie Brock is really the opposite of Peter Parker, same vocation with a different morality, and there is a unique opportunity with a symbiote that connects with them and demonstrates who it needs as a host and shows how Peter and all of us are vulnerable to that. Then [screenwriter] Alvin [Sargent] fell in love with the character and he wrote a really interesting character that we all found really interesting and Sam found really interesting and once Topher [Grace] came on…there was a thing on the internet saying he was too skinny because in the books Venom is so big.
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ZISKIN: But, he gained twenty-five pounds. I mean, we hate the guy because he gained twenty-five pounds, which took him six months, and then he lost it in about two weeks.
GRANT CURITS: [Laughs] Exactly!
iF: What about the pressure you feel from the fans and the studio, do you feel the pressure to make these movies is very tough?
ZISKIN: Sure, but making any movie is a terrifying, difficult and all consuming experience and when you’re in it you’re really just trying to serve it and make the best movie that you can. When we set out we had parameters and goals that we had to meet just like any movie. Sam is a self-proclaimed populous filmmaker; he wants to make movies that an audience will enjoy. He is very aware of the audience, but you also can’t let the fans dictate, because every fan had a SPIDER-MAN movie in their head, but because he is the biggest fan we then relied on his judgment and Avi’s as far as what was a good marriage. Ultimately, we have to shut out the noise of the movie that other people would want us to make, and hope that they want to come see the movie we have made.
iF: In SPIDER-MAN you wanted to use Doc Ock so you then put him in SPIDER-MAN 2, there was a rumor on this film that you wanted Ben Kingsley as the Vulture, so do you have any plans to use that for number four?
ZISKIN: When we get to actually have a conversation about the next one, I’m sure that will cause us to trigger back and think on things, but we haven’t had any time to have those conversations. Unfortunately, due to the confines of time, we have never plotted out the whole series. It would be a luxury, but we haven’t had that luxury.
iF: How prepared are you to do a fourth film if Sam doesn’t want to do it?
ZISKIN: This is the honest truth. This is the first question everyone asks us. When we were in Japan walking the red carpet, no one had seen SPIDER-MAN 3 yet, it was the world premiere, and we hadn’t ever shown it to an audience. All anybody wanted to know about was SPIDER-MAN 4, so we all would love to make SPIDER-MAN 4, 5, 6, but we don’t under what auspices.
iF: Can you talk about the casting process of the new characters in this like Topher Grace, who does such an amazing job working completely outside of anything we’ve seen him in?
ZISKIN: I’m so pleased you liked him. Again, having to test these two roles Sandman and Eddie Brock before we had complete scripts, so we wrote scenes for them to work with. We liked Topher from IN GOOD COMPANY, and the character of Eddie just kind of evolved when he came in and met with us. The character kind of developed around him. Both Thomas Haden Church and Topher were extraordinary because we cast them without a big search; they both had qualities to bring to the characters, and so they were both cast in a leap of faith on their part before the script was completed.
iF: This is the best SPIDER-MAN film of the three and I’ve been a fan and collector of Spidey for 25 years. In all of the movies you and Sam work to create a delicate balance between internal stories, personal life events, and action with villains. So, how long does it take to gestate all of the ideas to get the mix just right?
ZISKIN: Thank you! This was a long process, and if you want to know the whole process, Grant [Curtis] wrote a great book that will tell you everything you want to know about the process of making the movie. Sam and his brother started writing the story right after the opening of SPIDER-MAN 2, so that’s when it began, then there were many iterations of that for several months and a first draft was written two years ago in May. The writing was still going on up until two weeks before we opened. There was a really good collaboration between Sam and Amy Pascal and Matt Tobin at the studio. They shepherded and championed the first movies and championed them, but these movies still require a lot of money so we welcome that dialogue and a lot of good things came from it. But it was a bear for all involved.
CURITS: I think one of the fascinating things about SPIDER-MAN 3 is that the storytelling process that does distance or separate itself from one and two; is how much the story continued to be told after the camera had stopped rolling. Specifically, with the character of the Sandman and how much that character had to evolve in its CG form. It was so fascinating, because every day we’d have meetings with Sony Pictures Image Works and look at shots and the continuation of shots was that Sam was saying three months after they had wrapped he couldn’t believe he was still directing the film. I think what is really unique the story telling process never stops. We delivered one of the final shots in the birth of the Sandman sequence two weeks before the premiere. Up until that time Sam was working on the nuances of how Thomas’ character was emoting and acting during that performance.
iF: Avi, now that you are semi-retired, are you as actively involved on set and the like on movies like IRON MAN?
ARAD: IRON MAN, has enjoyed a lot less of my presence especially for the last month because of this movie. That really was fun because the toughest part of the movie is pre-production; getting the script right, getting interesting casting choices. After that there is an amazing production team and great director and I go visit in between and it’s looking great. With a cast like that how can you have anything but a fantastic movie, plus it’s a great script and director. Finally with these movies we are able to do casting from a SPIDER-MAN or X-MEN standpoint. The biggest actors from anywhere want to be in these movies, because they know that it’s character driven and they get an opportunity to act in way which you don’t have the opportunities otherwise and it’s big fun! [Laughs]
iF: What other Marvel properties are you still involved with?
ARAD: I’m very involved with THE INCREDIBLE HULK. It’s a new hulk. It’s a new size, new direction, new color, and new attitude. Anything that was done before is not in this movie. This is a very different kind of HULK; it’s more of a love story. It’s a kind of heroic HULK we love to show, that we hope the audience will be inspired by. He’s more human, and it’s very touching with huge action. There is a unique filming style with that we’re going to use with this movie.
iF: How do you go about casting someone like Edward Norton for the lead?
ARAD: We let him read the script, meet the team, and let him understand what the character is about and what the journey is about and he actually turned down HULK so the second time around it was more convincing. He probably wasn’t ready and in all fairness SPIDER-MAN and X-MEN made actors of this caliber interested in this kind of movies. It’s not about the action; it’s about the story.