Elf-Man and Spider-Man Part Ways

Hey guys, it’s Donnie…and this is possibly some of the saddest news I’ve heard in a while. Ya’ know, aside from the death of Gilligan, poor little buddy.

At a recent press junket for Tim Burton’s Corpse Bride, the often-hated Devin over at CHUD had the good thought to ask Danny Elfman if Sam Raimi had told him the villains for whom he would be scoring themes. Danny then dropped a bomb: He’s not scoring Spider-Man 3. Not only that, he’s never planning on working with Sam Raimi ever again:

My connection to Sam got completely severed. As far as I’m concerned, he went to sleep and somebody put a pod next to him and when he awoke, he wasn’t the same person I’ve known for a decade...

No [I won’t work with him again]. He went from right there, number 2 on my list of favorite directors, to the last – to the exact opposite of everything I look for in a film experience. Everything I could do on Spider-Man 1 I couldn’t do on Spider-Man 2. He got so intensely attached to the temp music, I couldn’t even adapt my own music. I couldn’t get close enough to me....

It’s the first time I’ve ever walked from a director in twenty years, and hopefully the last time. He became intolerable. I’ve been on some heavy duty films, so to say that it had to be pretty bad. I have been in war zones you wouldn’t believe in 55 films. But this is the first time I’ve said, I’ve had it. It’s just not worth it. I would rather go back to waiting tables than to do Spider-Man 2 again.

That’s just depressing. Certainly we can still look forward to much collaboration between Elfman and Burton in the near future, but his work on both Spider-Man films was sublime. I hope they’ll still be able to use his excellent main theme in the next installment, which now currently has no one at the musical helm. Let’s also hope that Raimi hasn’t actually gone totally off the deep end as a director, cuz I’m really rather excited to see what he decides to do once he’s finished playing with Peter Parker.