Each studio tends to work a little differently. Marvel, for instance, is a producer-driven studio that hires directors to fit into the larger vision shepherded by studio boss Kevin Feige. Warner Bros likes to cultivate relationships with creators to make the movies they want to make in the hopes they get a lot of money (JK Rowling, Chris Nolan, Zack Snyder, Ben Affleck, Wachowskis, Guillermo del Toro).
Generally, the bigger the budget your movie has, the more studio execs and marketing folks are going to try to intervene. Producers are supposed to be the buffer for that, keeping the money men at arm’s length from the filmmakers and allowing them the creatively to make something good. That doesn’t happen with Sony’s crown jewel, the Spider-Man franchise, according to composer James Horner.
In an interview with a James Horner fan site, Horner recalls his time on The Amazing Spider-Man, pointing out that the producers really didn’t want Marc Webb to bring his own ideas, which were all about character development, to the table:
[Marc Webb] was very inexperienced and he and I had a very good relationship and the producers had their own opinion. And they didn’t want his input. And then Sony had their own, they just wanted action. To me, the whole thing about doing the movie was I liked the director and there was a chance to write something for the two lead characters and then she dies in the next movie. But the next movie ended up being so terrible, I didn’t want to do it. It was just dreadful.
This isn’t a surprise to anyone paying attention to how Sony handles the Spider-Man franchise. Producer Avi Arad and his contemporaries have a death grip on the franchise, and their control broke down Sam Raimi and led to him leaving the franchise after he appeased his producers and stuffed Venom and a bunch of other stuff into Spider-Man 3. So it really isn’t a shock that they’ve done it again, wrestling control away from a young director like Marc Webb and stuffing his movies with a bunch of crap.
I like Webb, and I think if he had full control he could have made something interesting. He seems to have tried his best, though it’s unfortunate his best was not even good enough in the face of the brick wall he had to face to get his ideas implemented. If Spider-Man is ever going to make good movies again, the producers are going to have to back off in a big way. [James Horner Film Music via /Film]
