With Great Power: How Spider-Man Conquered Hollywood during the Golden Age of Comic Book Blockbusters Sean O'Connell 9781493066193

This is the Golden Age of comic-book blockbusters.

Since his introduction in August 1962, Spider-Man's pop culture reach has extended from comic books and clothing to video games, toys, and television shows. His strongest impact, however, is in the feature-film realm, where eight different Spider-Man movies collectively boast more than $7.2 billion in worldwide tickets sold.

If Hollywood had a superhero throne, Spider-Man would be sitting on it. Of the five highest-grossing film franchises in Hollywood history, Spider-Man now plays a pivotal role in three: the Marvel Cinematic Universe; the four-film Avengers franchise; and the Spider-Man series. This ranks the character ahead of James Bond, the Transformers, every on-screen Batman, and Peter Jackson's complete Tolkien series in Hollywood's box-office hierarchy.

Marvel's wall-crawler has come a long way since his earliest days, but his cinematic journey has yet to be documented. Unusual, since Spider-Man's Hollywood history is littered with A-list names (such as James Cameron and Leonardo DiCaprio), behind-the-scenes squabbles, franchise reboots, and Tom Holland preventing Disney from booting Spidey out of the MCU. The prized creation of Marvel guru Stan Lee has helped create and cultivate the current Golden Age of comic-book blockbusters, and lessons learned on the Spider-Man franchises are applied to all comic-book movies today.

Veteran film reporter and author Sean O'Connell uses his exclusive access to directors, actors, producers, and screenwriters to get the inside angles on Spider-Man's climb to the top of the superhero heap in With Great Power.

Sean O'Connell is the managing director of CinemaBlend, a globally recognized and industry-respected entertainment news website. He has been covering the film industry since 1999, and his byline has appeared in USA Today, The Washington Post, and Fandango.

Sean grew up on Marvel Comics and is a Spider-Man aficionado who covered all eight Spider-Man films during every phase of production. Since 2016, Sean has been able to file reports from the international film sets of both Spider-Man: Homecoming and Spider-Man: Far from Home.