Quarantine watch parties have been happening frequently, with filmmakers like James Gunn and the Russo Brothers screening their movies and interacting with fans on social media. The latest to join the party are the filmmakers behind Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse.
Co-directors Peter Ramsey, Bob Persichetti and Rodney Rothman, and producers Chris Miller and Phil Lord joined ComicBook.com’s latest screening party to share stories from the production as well as influences from the comics. To no surprise, a fair amount of questions regarding the sequel came up. The only morsel they could feed to the fans though was that they’re still working on it and are enthusiastic to share the film with them in two years’ time.
“We were reminded several times today NOT to say anything about it,” Lord said to a fan when asked if they can reveal anything about the sequel. “I guess they know we can’t be trusted. All I can say is… worked on it all day yesterday and had a ball. Watching this got me pumped for all the surprises in store for 2022.”
The follow-up, originally set for release on April 8th, 2022, will now come out on October 7th, 2022 due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The highly-anticipated sequel does have the advantage of being animated, meaning a lot of work can be done remotely, but that still wasn’t enough to save it from a delay.
I remember seeing the trailer for Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse and thinking, “oh, how cute. An animated movie sandwiched in between the Tom Holland live-action versions.” I think a lot of people’s expectations and anticipation were relatively muted.
But to the surprise of so many, it might in fact be the best Spider-Man movie ever. The win for Best Animated Feature at the Oscars was validation of its brilliance and it even had Holland himself thinking about making a live-action Spider-Verse with Tobey Maguire and Andrew Garfield appearing.
And there’s so many directions they can go in with it, too. The first film features numerous versions of Spider-Man as well as different interpretations of other characters such as Doctor Octopus. Lord and Miller are aware of this fantastic problem to have as well and they’re taking the challenge in stride, saying:
“I think there’s a bunch [of possible characters], and I don’t want to say too much because there’s a wide breadth of characters that are coming out of the Spider-Man universes now.” Miller explained. “And it’s really fun to be able to sort of think about plucking ones that you haven’t seen before or have something interesting thematic to say.”
“I have to think about that,” added Lord. “That’s a good question that we haven’t been asked before, which is why we’re sitting here going, ‘We don’t have a good [answer]. We are like, ‘Oh, wow. We’re about to go into this big junket. We might have to have an answer for that.'”
That’s what’s great about animation. The sandbox is so expansive and when you include a deep and rich history of Spider-Man mythology, the possibilities are truly endless.