What went into your decision to reboot the franchise instead of just doing another sequel? How did you come to that decision?
AVI ARAD: I’ll start?
MATT TOLMACH: I love it when you start.
ARAD: It was a great thing with Tobey [Maguire] and Sam [Rami], and we made three movies together and we became a family, and we’re still a family, there’s great fondness among us. Sam had a story to tell for the first Spider-Man, so it was one form of origin of Spider-Man, versus origin of Peter Parker, more origin of Spider-Man. Then it was the theme of “Spidey-no-more,” and then the darkside, how do deal with your new power, your responsibility and how do you deal with your powers. And at the end of it, because of this, between us and the studio, we all wanted to stay together and do one more, and what was happening, the one more was not a natural version of where we want to go, especially coming from Sam. Sam is not only the most honorable, terrific man but he’s very honest, honest with himself first, and for us as producers, I mean you’re literally putting it on the table, it also represents, if you don’t have your conviction you have to put your money where your mouth is. But we didn’t have a natural story, and this is Spider-Man, this is the coup de gras, you cannot break this thing ever. And it was a mutual decision, with Sam and Tobey and us, we had this story—
TOLMACH: And Sam, people always ask about this, Sam— We tried really hard, we developed a script. What Avi was saying, I was at the studio at the time, believe me, everybody is singularly incentivized to make that movie, because the franchise had been so profitable and so beloved. Sam said, “My version of this has been told. I told these three,” as Avi said, “three installments of the character were a trilogy for me. And I realize it now, that I’ve completed that, and someone else needs to take this on. ” And was very, very clear about that. When your leader tells you that you listen.
ARAD: And supportive of the change.
TOLMACH: Wildly supportive, and to this day. And at the same time, we always had lived knowing that eventually we’re going to tell another version of the Spider-Man story, because the comic books have. People talk about it like it was some crazy idea, the truth is, it’s been happening over and over and over again. And so one of the things we always talk about, one of the things Sam came to realize is that the ripest moment in the life of Peter Parker happens when he’s in high school, when he’s just out of it, when he’s young and everything is so extreme, and we wanted to get back to that a little bit. We wanted to get back to it in a way that was completely different.
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