Tons O' Spider-Man News and Info

By Cmaster2 April 2, 2002 11:23 AM

Sydney, Australia was host this morning to the first press conference for the upcoming "Spider-Man" movie. Tobey Maguire, Kirsten Dunst, Willem Dafoe and friends have been in Australia since last week and spent the Easter gambling at the races, absailing, etc along with attending a top secret function last night. Meanwhile Director Sam Raimi, and Producers Laura Ziskin & Avi Arad flew in this morning and all six were in attendance at a major press conference this morning along with numerous reps from Australian, Asian and European media. Here's my notes from the session:

- Director Sam Raimi announced that he officially just signed on to direct the sequel only yesterday.

- Interesting news for "Evil Dead" fans. Raimi said he liked to do a fourth ED flick, and is keen to work with Bruce Campbell and Robert Tapert again. Also if he were to do it, he would do it again on a shoestring budget.

- Tobey Maguire trained six days a week for five months to prepare for the film. His exercies were a combination of yoga, gymnastics, martial arts, weight training and a lot of bike riding. He hasn't continued with it, opting for a doughnut diet these days.

- Suit wise Tobey was in the uniform during the closeups and non-action scenes, stuntment were used for jumping scenes up to a height of about 2-3 stories, higher or more elaborate stunts than that were done in CG

- Despite the first trailer being pulled due to September 11th, the Twin Towers will be in the picture in tribute - however they won't be used for any of the 'wow' action sequences, merely part of the background

- Willem Dafoe did practically all of his own stunts on the glider so when you see the Goblin moving around on it, when its not CG its Willem pretty much the whole time

- Why did Tobey, normally known for playing angst-ridden teens, take on an action hero who wins the girl and defeats the bad guy style role? He wanted to do something more like himself in real life (the gag got a laugh from the crowd).

- A group of paparazzi photographers staged a walkout during the start of the conference over not being allowed to photo the previous night's secret screening/function, causing a lot of confusion at first.

- They've pretty much used all the scenes they shot in the final cut so don't expect much in the way of deleted scenes.

- The DVD will contain an "unprecedented" number of extras including a TON of making of material shot by a seperate film crew during the production, and a gag reel.

Thank you Mr. Garth Franklin!