From The Archives: What Sam Raimi told us 20 years ago about making 'Spider-Man'

We websling back to 20 years ago, when we spoke to director Sam Raimi about making the 'Spider-Man' movie, starring Tobey Maguire.

The release of Spider-Man was one of the biggest movie events not just of 2002, but in the history of comic book movies. Of course, at the time, Marvel had already made inroads into the movie business thanks to the success of the first X-Men (2000) and the cult favourite Blade (1998), but Spider-Man would go on to redefine the superhero genre.

The movie was the first film to reach US$100mil (RM435.6mil) in a single weekend, and went on to rake in over US$825mil (RM3.6bil) in the global box office, making it the sixth all-time highest-grossing film at the time. It also spawned two more sequels – the excellent Spider-Man 2, and the much-maligned Spider-Man 3 – before Maguire hung up his spandex and the franchise was rebooted with Andrew Garfield in the role.