Laura Ziskin is one of the producers on the $140 million-budgeted "Spider-Man". She is already at work on "Spider-Man 2", which will open in 2004.

There's a rumour that you had to re-edit "Spider-Man" because of September 11. Is that true?

The myth goes that we re-shot or had to re-conceive the movie, but the truth is Sony had created a piece of marketing material, the teaser trailer, which featured the twins towers and a helicopter caught in a web between the towers. It was quite an effective piece of advertising and beautifully shot. In fact, when we saw it, we liked it so much that we actually used it in the film. In the movie there's a montage when Peter becomes Spider-Man, and it's in that sequence. But after September 11, it did seem inappropriate to us to put the towers in the trailer, although we did make a decision to leave the twin towers in the New York skyline. Some film makers took them out, but we felt we wanted to leave them in.

How did you create the spider's web and silk?

That was one of our biggest challenges in the movie and was something that we worked on for two years, and I'm sure we'll continue to work on even as we go into the sequel. I recently read in the paper that a company is working on creating something that mimics a spider web, but for us there were multiple versions of the web. Some were practical, when Spider-Man actually had to hold on to something, and all kinds of materials were used. It was quite a process to figure out how to make something that would look like a web, as it's such a unique creation. And then other times the web was created using CGI.

Do you look at spiders differently now?

Yes, I do. I guess it's because we scrutinised them so carefully in the making of the film and we had a guy who worked with us who we called our spider wrangler, who came on set with his spiders. He ended up having quite a difficult time because we shot the movie in winter and spiders are a summer phenomenon, so he had to go to the southern hemisphere to collect them. But I think I have a better understanding of these creatures and aren't as afraid of them as I used to be.

Can you tell us a bit about the DVD?

The DVD is in works right now. It's going to have quite a bit of Marvel history and the history of Spider-Man and some comparisons of actual images. We all felt that we wanted to be loyal and have real fidelity to the comic books, so you'll see some of that, and some commentary and interviews. There won't be a whole bunch of behind-the-scenes footage, as we want to make sequels and don't want to give all the tricks and secrets away.

How far are you planning to take the franchise?

I think the stories dictate. The comic book has been around for 40 years, and it's going to be around for 40 more. I think we take it one movie at a time, as long as we have a good story to tell. It's our obligation to create material that will engage Toby [Maguire] and Kirsten [Dunst] to continue to be on board, which thankfully they are for the sequel, but I think we'll all know when we've have enough. The audience will tell us, for sure.