James Platten Vanderbilt is an American screenwriter and producer. He was one of the three screenwriters, along with Steve Kloves and Alvin Sargent, for the film The Amazing Spider-Man (2012). He returned to contribute to the story for The Amazing Spider-Man 2 (2014) with Alex Kurtzman, Roberto Orci, and Jeff Pinkner, and would've returned to co-write the story and script for The Amazing Spider-Man 4 (2021) with Juliana Bard and Lana Baumer, before it's cancellation.
Outside of this, Vanderbilt is best known for writing the films Zodiac (2007), White House Down (2013), Independence Day: Resuregence (2017), and Murder Mystery (2019). He also helped produce the films The Meg and Slender Man (both 2018), and The House with a Clock in It's Walls and Ready or Not (both 2019), the latter of which he cameoed as the demon Mr. Le Bail. He'd make his directorial debut with the movie Truth (2015). He also co-wrote the story for Transformers: Rise of the Beasts (2023), alongside Joby Harold (technically, they were two separate treatments with different stories but were combined by Hasbro and Paramount Pictures).
Trivia[]
- Like Alex Kurtzman and Roberto Orci, Vanderbilt has worked on live-action adaptions of both Spider-Man and Transformers.
- During production for Spider-Man 4 of Sam Raimi's previous film series (now the Spider-Man Trilogy), Vanderbilt was brought in to write two treatments after Gary Ross, Peter Schink, and Scott Stewart's drafts were rejected by Raimi and Avi Arad, which got re-writes by David Lindsay-Abarie. While Raimi, Arad, and Sony were impressed by Vanderbilt's focus on characterization, due to pressure for deadlines and executive obstruction, as well as Raimi's dropping interest in the project, Arad instructed Vanderbilt to write a treatment for a reboot film in the event of Raimi's increasingly likely departure. When the film did indeed get cancelled after Raimi left production, Sony greenlit Vanderbilt's treatment which would become ASM1.
- Vanderbilt had also written an early draft for The Amazing Spider-Man 2 during post-production on the first film, with consultation from Ehren Kruger and Marc Webb, which differed significantly from what would become the final cut. It would have maintained the darker tone of it's predecessor, with Peter wearing his original suit. Electro would have been the sole villain, with Harry Osborn still present but playing a smaller role, albeit still regarding him discovering he's dying of Retroviral Hypodysplasia. He would be aided by Dr. Rajit Rathra (as the scene where he was killed off by the Lizard was ultimately scrapped), telling him about a secret project Norman Osborn had put in place before his untimely death. Max Dillon's admiration of Spider-Man following him being saved by the hero was to be a lot more delusional and hands-on, with him recklessly trying to help Spidey during a gang of robbers attempting to lift a plutonium cache (which would instead be used as half of the final movie's prologue),