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10 Movies That Had Completely Different First Drafts

Making movies is hard work. Though the best films tend to make the process look easy, while lesser ones look like no effort was put in at all, the truth is usually not quite so clear cut. The folks behind an awful movie might have started with a strong idea and good intentions but somehow lost sight of what worked and what didn't. Those who bring us awesome movies, on the other hand, might have begun with a stinker and then polished it until it shined.

6) Spider-Man

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You may know that Avatar director James Cameron worked on his own Spider-Man movie throughout the 90s, before it ultimately fell through and the franchise landed in the lap of Sam Raimi. What you might not know, however, is how off-the-wall insane his Spider-Man script was.

First up, some context. In order to get his $3 million writer’s fee, Cameron had to give the studio a screenplay budgeted at $60 million. His answer was just to take an old un-produced script (that had already been doctored by about seven writers) and polish it up. The result, as expected, was an incomprehensible mess.

For one, Doctor Octopus was the main villain in this version. Except, he was inexplicably known as Professor Octopus and was also bitten by a radioactive spider – which meant he also referred to himself as Spider-Man. Oh, and his big evil scheme was basically stealing Peter’s physics paper. As if that wasn’t weird enough, Ock had a comic sidekick called Wiener and his robotic arms were referred to as Waldos.

Funnily enough, Arnold Schwarzenegger was set to play Ock – in a supervillain role that would have been even goofier than his Mr. Freeze.