Watch Chris Claremont Tell the Story of How James Cameron Almost Made X-MEN
I'm sure most of you are already aware of the fact that at one point in James Cameron's career he was developing a Spider-Man film. Unfortunately, nothing ever came of it. I would have loved to see what Cameron would have done with Spider-Man. You also may have heard the story of how he and Zero Dark Thirty director Kathryn Bigelow almost developed an X-Men movie for Marvel. In fact, it was that meeting for X-Men that spawned into the Spider-Man talk. We've posted about this before a couple years ago, but just in case you missed it, we now have a video interview of X-Men writer Chris Claremont telling the story of what went down.
The interview was with Blastr, and in it he explained how Stan Lee was in the meeting with Cameron, and that the filmmaker brought up the idea of producing an X-Men film that Bigelow would direct. In the middle of discussing the details of the project Stan Lee suddenly turned to Cameron and said, “I hear you really like Spider-Man.” Claremont says from that moment forward he could see the X-Men movie evaporating. Here's his explanation of how it all went down:
"It was going to be a Cameron-produced film directed by Kathryn Bigelow. What happened was that Stan and I went to a meeting with Cameron. The whole point was to pitch the X-Men movie. He was going to do it, he was going to produce it. He was looking to have Kathryn Bigelow direct it.
"I was all set to talk ideas with the guys, and we're sitting there...Stan looks at him, and says, "I hear you really like Spider-Man." And Cameron's eyes light up, and he's, like, "Oh, man, I love Spider-Man!"...and Stan's pitching ideas to Cameron, Cameron's pitching ideas to Stan, and going back and forth. And the rest of us are sitting there kind of watching the X-Men evaporate into oblivion.
He (Stan Lee) knew which character was his favorite, and if I were him, I would have done the same thing."
Both X-Men and Spider-Man eventually happened, but without Cameron's involvement. I really wish that we would have been able to see what Cameron's vision of these Marvel projects were. I can't help but think he would have done some incredible ground breaking things with these film projects. I guess we'll never know.