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Sam Raimi, Tobey Maguire and Kirsten Dunst Discuss Spider-Man 3
Columbia Pictures surprised Spider-Man fans at the 2006 San Diego Comic Con by publicizing only the appearance of director Sam Raimi but bringing Spider-Man 3 stars Tobey Maguire, Kirsten Dunst, Topher Grace, Thomas Haden Church and Bryce Dallas Howard as well as producer Laura Ziskin to talk to the huge crowd gathered for one of the biggest events of its kind in the world.
Not only did the crowd of 5,000+ get to hear from the film’s stars, they were also treated to amazing footage from Spider-Man 3 put together just for the event. The footage had never been screened for the public before and included unfinished scenes as well as the first shots of Sandman (Haden Church) in action and a quick look at Venom (Grace).
Judging by the reaction of the crowd to the footage, Raimi and Co’s third Spider-Man movie easily lives up to the first two films of the series.
Prior to taking the stage to field questions from fans, the cast and director Raimi took part in small press conference in which Raimi did a great job of dodging questions that were too specific and that might lead to revealing storylines he wants to keep secret until the film’s release. Maguire and Dunst also showed great restraint, carefully wording their answers so that no spoilers could possibly be divulged.
The Big News Coming Out at Comic Con: Director Sam Raimi started the press conference out on a lighter note by joking when asked if he’d be making any big announcements during the Spider-Man 3 presentation. “I’m having a baby. Oh, you mean in regards to the story and the characters in the picture? Not interested in my personal life then, I guess? That’s fine, be that way. Yes, there is a big announcement that we were going to make today in front of the kids who’ve come to Comic Con, and that is that the movie will… One of the big villains that we have been expecting, will be my mother-in-law; will be Venom. He’s coming to star across from Tobey [Maguire] in this picture as the villain, along with Thomas Haden Church who plays the Sandman.”
Sam Raimi on the Decision to Include Venom in Spider-Man 3: “Avi Arad, who’s really got his pulse on all the Marvel fans better than any head of the corporation has ever understood those people that are interested in the corporation’s product - he really knows what those kids want - he said, ‘You’ve had two Spider-Man pictures. This third one - there’s so many kids, so many fans of Spider-Man want to see Venom. Even if you didn’t grow up with him, they want to see him. You’ve got the Sandman, that’s one of your favorite villains. Why don’t you bring Venom in also and make those kids, the fans of Venom, happy?’ So I thought that’s what we should do.”
Raimi’s opinion of Venom as a villain in the Spider-Man film world changed after seeing him brought to life by Topher Grace. “Now that I’ve seen Topher Grace perform him, then saw what Alvin Sargent did with the script… He created a great character. He really filled out Eddie Brock into a very meaningful character. Tobey has a great energy with him in the few scenes that they play together as competitors, and I really like him now.”
The Design of Venom: Raimi credits his entire team with creating Venom’s look. “We had a great design team on this picture led by James Acheson, our costume designer, working with a team of brilliant sculptors, artists, painters, and we studied all the different looks. So many different artists created different looks of Venom and we tried to take the ones that we thought would work best for us, but also the ones that Avi felt were the most classic elements and base it on that.”
Making Venom realistic within the world of the Spider-Man movies was a challenge for director Raimi. “There’s a lot of fantastic elements about Venom that you could say are in conflict with the realism that we wanted to have in the picture,” explained Raimi. “But we just said to ourselves, ‘Kirsten and Tobey, you’ll have to do the heavy lifting here to bring it back down to earth because there’s this wild goo from outer space and you’re just going to have to connect us to the characters.’”
Raimi laughed at the follow-up to the ‘realistic’ question which called him on the ‘goo’ statement. Asked if his answer confirms Venom will be from outer space, Raimi countered with, “(Laughing) I never said that. I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
The other two Spider-Man movies include visual nods to the covers and panels from the comics. Raimi says the third film does something similar. “In this story we’re less specific but we did try and stay very true to the Venom comic books when they describe his birth – the creation of Venom. We did try and stay true to the writers’ and the artists’ ideas of how that happened.”
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