James Cameron calls his Spider-Man ‘the greatest movie I never made’ after failing to secure the film’s rights

Cameron said his adaptation would have been ‘more in the vein of Terminator or Aliens’

James Cameron has called his Spider-Man “the greatest movie I never made” after he failed to secure rights to the superhero franchise.

As reported by Indiewire, the Avatar filmmaker opened up about his disappointment over never being able to make his version of Spider-Man in the new book Tech Noir: The Art of James Cameron.

The Oscar-winner also discussed the details of his vision for the web-slinging superhero during a recent roundtable interview attended by ScreenCrush.

He said that his adaptation of the Marvel comics would have been “very different” to what Sam Raimi – who directed the original trilogy starring Tobey Maguire – put on screen.

Cameron said he “wanted to make something that had a kind of gritty reality to it”. He added that his version “would have been more in the vein of Terminator and Aliens”.

“I wanted to ground it in reality and ground it in universal human experience,” he said. “I think it would have been a fun film to make.”

In his mind, Spider-Man’s powers are “a great metaphor” for “that untapped reservoir of potential that people have that they don’t recognise in themselves”.

“And it was also in my mind a metaphor for puberty and all the changes to your body, your anxieties about society, about society’s expectations, your relationships with your gender of choice that you’re attracted to, all those things,” he continued.

Neytiri (Zoë Saldana) and Jake (Sam Worthington) in Avatar (Courtesy Twentieth Century Fox)

Cameron was ultimately  unable to secure the rights to make his comic book movie when they became available because Fox was unwilling to “go to bat for it”.

“All of a sudden it was a free ball,” he said. “I tried to get Fox to buy it, but apparently the rights were a little bit clouded and Sony had some very questionable attachments to the rights.

“[Former Fox president] Peter Chernin didn’t want to get into a legal fight. I’m like, ‘Are you kidding? This thing could be worth, I don’t know, a billion dollars!’ $10 billion later…”

After Cameron missed out on the opportunity to make Spider-Man, the filmmaker said he made a vow to “not labour in the house of others’ IP”.

(Sony Pictures Releasing)

“I made a decision after Titanic to just kind of move on and do my own things and not labour in the house of others’ IP. So I think [Spider-Man not happening] was probably the kick in the a** that I needed to just go make my own stuff,” he said.

The forthcoming Spider-Man: No Way From Home, directed by Jon Watts and starring Tom Holland, will arrive in UK cinemas on 15 December.