HISTORY OF THE COMIC BOOK FILM: David Lindsay-Abaire: The SPIDER-MAN 4 Script Is NOT Mine

In a multi-part series, Comic Book Film Editor William Gatevackes will be tracing the history of comic book movies from the earliest days of the film serials to today’s big blockbusters and beyond. Along with the history lesson, Bill will be covering some of the most prominent comic book films over the years and why they were so special. We take a break from the parade of comic book films to update you on a previous entry.

Back on December 6^th, as part of this feature’s look at the Spider-Man franchise, I discussed several scripts making the rounds on the Internet that were supposedly written for the abandoned fourth installment directed by Sam Raimi. In the column, I doubted the veracity of the scripts, and it turns out that I was right. How do I know? The author of one of the “scripts” let us know.

Pulitzer-prize winning playwright David Lindsay-Abaire sent an e-mail to FBOL Head Honcho Rich Drees to let us know in no uncertain terms that the script found online was not written by him. As you can tell from the excerpt from his email below the script is most definitely not his.

Dear Rich —

David Lindsay-Abaire here.

I wouldn’t normally respond to an article like this, but things can linger on the internet for years. And if I’m going to take some knocks online, I’d like to think they were based on a script that I actually wrote instead of some fan fiction that someone tacked my name onto. With that in mind, I wonder if you could at least update the article to add some kind of note saying that it’s been confirmed that the script in question is not in fact by David Lindsay-Abaire. (For what it’s worth, my script was 122 pages, and featured Kraven as the villain.)

 

I am more than happy to help Mr. Lindsay-Abaire set the record straight. In addition to this post, I will be updating the original post to reflect his correction concerning that script. Hopefully, this column will come up when people search Google for Mr. Lindsay-Abaire’s Spider-Man script, so fans won’t waste time on the fake script.

This does seem to be the first time that Kraven was mentioned as a villain in the franchise. It would have been interesting to see Lindsay-Abaire’s take on the character.

We will return to our regularly scheduled History of the Comic Book Film post with our next installment.