The film's working title was The Amazing Spider-Man. Some sources spell Spider-Man as Spiderman. The opening credits are shown across a graphic of a moving spider web, interspersed with sketches of the main characters in scenes from Spider-Man (2002). The web and sketches, drawn in a style similar to a comic book, were created by noted comic book artist Alex Ross.
       Producers Laura Ziskin and Avi Arad and director Sam Raimi also made Spider-Man, the highly successful first installment of a proposed series featuring the Marvel Comic characters. Many of the production crew from the first film also worked on the second, which, according to an interview given by Ziskin on the DVD of Spider-Man 2, began pre-production as soon as the first film was completed.
       Principal cast members from Spider-Man revived their roles for the sequel, including Tobey Maguire, Kirsten Dunst, James Franco, Rosemary Harris, J. K. Simmons and Bill Nunn. In addition, Cliff Robertson as "Ben Parker," and Willem Dafoe as "Green Goblin/Norman Osborn" briefly revived their respective roles from the earlier film. Actor Bruce Campbell, who made a cameo appearance as the "Snooty usher" in Spider-Man 2, appeared briefly in Spider-Man as the ring announcer. Campbell, who starred in Raimi’s cult favorite The Evil Dead (1983) and its sequels, Evil Dead 2 (1987) and Army of Darkness (1993) is a close friend of the director, and has appeared in most of his films.
       Although the onscreen credits read "Based on the Marvel comic book by Stan Lee and Steve Ditko," the screenplay was not based on a specific issue of the comic series, but on characters and situations created over the years. The character of "Spider-Man" was introduced by Lee and Ditko in Aug 1962, in Marvel's Amazing Fantasy comic, issue number 15. The character was given his first individual series, Amazing Spider-Man, in 1963. That series ended in 1998, after 441 issues, but the character has continued to appear, and, as of 2005, is the lead in several concurrent Spider-Man series.
       Lee and Ditko no longer work on any of the series, but Lee, who can be seen briefly in the film as "Man dodging debris," continues in an editorial capacity at Marvel comics. In recent years, the comics have been written by various authors, including director Kevin Smith, who wrote a 4-part mini-series featuring Spider-Man and another Marvel character, Black Cat, from 2002 to 2003.
       Spider-Man 2, as well as its predecessor, Spider-Man, released in 2002, follows some of the story points of the Spider-Man comics, but with some situations and characters added or altered for the films. For example, although Green Goblin was killed in the first Spider-Man movie, he lives on in the comics. His son Harry, however, who took over as Green Goblin, was eventually killed in the comics. Similarly, Dr. Octavius/Doc Ock has remained with the series, continuing on his criminal path.
       Like his cinematic counterpart, the comic's Spider-Man alter ego, Peter Parker, is a young scientist who works part-time as Spider-Man's exclusive photographer for New York’s Daily Bugle newspaper. One aspect of Spider-Man's super-power persona created for the first film, that he can spin webs directly from his wrists, was added as a characteristic of the comics' hero after the first film's release. Originally, the character in the comics needed a mechanical device, which was invented and built by Peter to create his webs.
       According to news items in 2002, Pulitzer-Prize winning author Michael Chabon was given the assignment to write the screenplay for Spider-Man 2. Other writers were brought onto the project, including David Koepp, who wrote Spider-Man; however, in the onscreen credits of Spider-Man 2, Chabon shares a co-screen story credit on the film with Alfred Gough and Miles Millar, with the screenplay credit going exclusively to Alvin Sargent.
       According to various contemporary news items and feature articles, for a period of time in early 2003, actor Jake Gyllenhaal was considered as a replacement for Maguire in the film’s title role. Sources agree that Maguire’s chronic back problems had caused some delays in the start of production, but sources conflict on whether Gyllenhaal was actually hired for the film or merely considered as a replacement when, according to a 24 Mar 2003 Var article, less than a month before principal photography was to begin, Maguire informed Columbia that problems with his back might necessitate an additional delay. Some sources suggest that Maguire was fired but that Amy Pascal, head of Columbia’s parent company, Sony Pictures, was convinced to reconsider the decision by Universal Pictures head Ron Meyer, a personal friend of Maguire.
       Principal interior photography, which began in Apr 2004, was done at Sony Pictures Studios in Culver City, CA, with the burning apartment building sequence shot on the Universal Studios back lot. Location exteriors were shot in New York, but the elevated train sequence was shot in Chicago, which, according to interviews on the DVD release, the filmmakers felt would better suit their needs.
       As noted in interviews on the featurette on the DVD release of the film, there was extensive use of the “Spydercam” on Spider-Man 2, a device used only for the last scene of Spider-Man. The Spydercam, an apparatus encasing a camera, can quickly travel on flexible cables, enabling it to emulate the flying and jumping from heights that Spider-Man does when he casts the threads of his spider webs and vaults through the air from building to building. Using the Spydercam, director of photography Bill Pope was able to film large sequences that allowed the audience to have the feeling that they were flying alongside Spider-Man and provided much more sophisticated and smoother sequences than the first film.
       The featurette and the film’s presskit also note that the Spydercam meant that the project was somewhat less reliant on the kind of CG (computer generated) special effects that would normally be used on such a large-scale production. As described in the featurette, previous to filming the live-action segments, satellite pictures of New York and Chicago were plotted to create an exact path for the Spydercam to follow. After the live sequences were filmed, often in actual New York City streets, both on and off tall buildings, visual effects designer John Dykstra’s team would seamlessly combine the live action with a CG clone. A HR feature article on Spider-Man 2 also noted that it would be the first released film to utilize a 4K digital intermediate to “give audiences the ultimate in release-print quality.”
       In a new trend for theatrical motion pictures, the trailer for Spider-Man 2 was released first on the internet, on the Yahoo.com home page, in Dec 2003, six months prior to the film’s release. As noted in various news items, the film’s marketing became a subject of some controversy in Jun 2004, when Major League Baseball entered into an agreement with Sony Corp. to allow bases in fifteen major league stadiums to be decorated with Spider-Man graphics. Negative comments from fans and baseball commentators forced the parties to roll back some of the $2.5 million promotion and remove the graphics from the bases, although other promotional items, such as posters surrounding the field remained.
       In Jul 2004, British animation company Spite Your Face Productions, launched a four-minute internet parody of Spider-Man 2. The computer-generated and stop-action film was commissioned and partially financed by Sony Pictures and Marvel studios, in association with the Lego Group, and featured Lego toy figures as the main characters. Like its predecessor, Spider-Man 2 also spawned a number of licensed merchandise and video games.
       An Apr 2003 DV news item outlined litigation that had recently been unsealed regarding a licensing dispute between Marvel Entertainment and Sony. According to the article, in Feb 2003, Marvel filed a suit to sue Sony to terminate its 1999 licensing agreement with them following the release of Spider-Man 2. The final disposition of that suit has not been determined. A LAT article on 20 Jan 2005 reported that U.S. District Judge Robert Sweet had ruled that Marvel owed Stan Lee 10% of the profits it had received since Nov 1998 for films based on Spider-Man and other superheroes created by Lee, who filed suit against the company in Nov 2002. That suit was settled in Apr 2005, at which time it was reported in LAT that Lee would receive in excess of ten million dollars, but his attorneys did not disclose what the total financial settlement would be. At the same time, Marvel signed a new eight-year agreement with Paramount Pictures to distribute as many as ten films based on characters developed by Lee, but the settlement ended Lee's rights to future Marvel profits.
       Spider-Man 2 was the second highest grossing film of 2004 in North America, according to Exhibitor Relations, bringing in $373.4 million in domestic box-office receipts. The film placed third internationally, with $410.4 million in foreign receipts. Along with its regular theatrical release, Spider-Man 2 was shown in the Imax format at selected theaters.
       In addition to being selected as one of the Top Ten Films of the year by AFI, Spider-Man 2 was included in numerous Top Ten lists. The film received good to excellent notices in most reviews, with critic Roger Ebert calling it "the best Superhero film of all time." The film received an Academy Award for Best Visual Effects and was nominated in the categories of Best Sound Editing and Best Sound Mixing.
       Although Spider-Man marked the first live-action incarnation of the character, he and others from the comic books have been featured in several animated television series, all of which have had some participation of Ditko and Lee, beginning with the syndicated 1967-70 series, also entitled Spider-Man, which was the first to use the familiar theme song by Bob Harris and Paul Francis Webster. Other animated series include The Amazing Adventures of Spider-Man, produced in 1978 following a 1977 feature-length animated film of the same title and a new series of Spider-Man that began in 2003.
       A third film in Columbia's series, Spider-Man 3 was released in May 2007. That film also was directed by Raimi and starred Maguire, Dunst, Franco, Harris and other principals from the first two films, with new villains played by Topher Grace and Thomas Haden Church. In Apr 2007, Hollywood trade papers reported that a Broadway musical version of Spider-Man, to be directed by Julie Taynor with new music and lyrics by U2's Bono and the Edge, was in the development stage for eventual production on Broadway.