Life must be good for Sony studio chairwoman Amy Pascal. What a year she had in 2006! Under her watch, 13 of the studio's movies opened at number one. The most successful of the lot, The Da Vinci Code, grossed $758 million. A few months later, Casino Royale raked in nearly $600 million more. By year's end, the studio had banked a record-setting $3.3 billion worldwide. Of course, in any other industry, such accomplishments would make Pascal untouchable. But in Hollywood, where people are especially loath to celebrate the good fortune of others, the backroom scuttlebutt centered on the ungodly sums of money Pascal was laying out for the latest Spider-Man sequel.
On the surface, Spider-Man 3 has all the ingredients of a box-office slam dunk--spectacular special effects, an obsessive fan base, and a roster of bankable stars. Moreover, its two previous installments have grossed $1.6 billion for the studio.
Even before filming began in January 2006, Sam Raimi promised to pull out all the stops for his third Spidey film (likely the last he'll direct in the series). He wasn't kidding. As production dragged on into late summer--it had been scheduled to conclude in June--stories about the project's ballooning budget started popping up all over town.