Writer David Koepp Reveals Original Plans For Tobey Maguire’s Spider-Man Trilogy

Koepp had interesting plans for Sam Raimi’s trilogy

Though you’ll now have a lot of love for Tom Holland’s Spider-Man in the MCU, the original trilogy blessed us with Tobey Maguire’s take on the webslinger. With a specific take that introduced us to characters such as Sandman and Venom, it is interesting to think that we almost got a very different story.

Writer David Koepp wrote the script for the first instalment, however did not return with director Sam Raimi. Staying onboard would have given us a certain storyline sooner than 2014’s poorly received The Amazing Spider-Man 2.

When speaking to Collider, Koepp had this to say:

Basically [my trilogy idea] was the telling of the Gwen Stacey/Harry Osborn story but I spaced everything out differently.

Koepp continued:

I wanted Gwen to be killed in the middle of the second movie, because that follows sort of the Empire Strikes Back model, and I had different villains I wanted to use. Just a different way to tell that story.

The writer obviously didn’t get to make any of this a reality. Instead we got an easily forgettable Gwen Stacey in Bryce Dallas Howard’s version.

Koepp did, however, almost get another chance at this. Talking about almost returning during Andrew Garfield’s tenure, the Indiana Jones 5 writer had this to say:

There was a time maybe seven or eight years ago when I was gonna come back for a couple Spider-Man movies, after they’d done their first Amazing Spider-Man. On the very first Spider-Man I sort of planned out what I thought the first three movies should be, and then all the assorted personalities it didn’t work for me to keep writing the Spider-Man movies… So I was excited to come back and try to finish the story I started telling in the first one, and as we were about to agree that I was going to do that, I pulled out all the old stuff and I started outlining those two movies and I thought, ‘Boy, you can’t go home again. That moment has passed. The time when I was really feeling it was 10 years ago, and there’s no point in trying to recreate it.’ So I bailed.

Years after Maguire and Garfield’s interpretations, we have young Tom Holland swinging around on the big screen. The next outing is due to begin production later this year with a new release date as opposed to the original release date of 16 July, 2021 before the Coronavirus pandemic put a halt on production.

The Untitled Spider-Man 3 is scheduled for release on 5 November, 2021.