Spidey's Got $$ In His Eyes

I spent a good chunk of the weekend - when I wasn't watching movies (Three in the theater! Two at home!) - skimming through the new Summer Preview issue of Entertainment Weekly (Nat live-blogged the cover over at TFE) with Spider-Man 3 on the it, so the movie's on my mind (not that it wasn't last week), but this ridiculous news seems about right for the scope of the thing (it's the longest Spidey movie yet! Still not done editing! It'll be on billions of screens across the galaxy!) - From Page Six:

""SPIDER-Man 3" will be the most expensive movie ever made when it opens May 4. While industry insiders claim Sony Pictures spent $350 million on production alone, Hollywood reporter Kim Masters reports in Radar magazine that the total bill - including prints and marketing costs - is more than $500 million, making the Tobey Maguire and Kirsten Dunst flick a record-breaker.

One of the film's producers, Laura Ziskin, disputed the $350 million number, and said, "I refuse to say the [real] number because it makes me choke. 'Spider-Man 3' was a super-expensive movie - the most expensive film we've ever made. But there's no way you can get to $300 million." A Sony rep claimed it only cost $270 million. The production spent more than $1 million a day shooting on location in union-heavy New York, and it also employed expensive computer-generated special effects."

I love that quote from Ziskin - it should make her choke. But Raimi's a stud so I think we'll probably see every buck on the screen. Right? If there's any luck, maybe Raimi skimmed like 1/150th of that budget as pocket change to make another Evil Dead movie. That's what he oughta be thinking on now!

As an aside, I only now realized that Bryce Dallas Howard is pregnant in the main Spidey cast photo from the issue (at right) - every time I turned past that page this weekend I had this big WTF moment, wondering why she was so.... voluminous... in the shot.
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