SPOILER WARNING
Chapter and Spider-Verse
THE MAKERS OF SPIDER-MAN: ACROSS THE SPIDER-VERSE O NCHAOS, CLIFFHANGERS AND CREATIVE RISKS
WORDS CHRIS HEWITT
NOVEMBER 2023
EDITED BY CHRIS HEWITT
SPIDER-MAN: ACROSS The Spider-Verse had some pretty big untied shoes to fill. Its predecessor, Spider-Man: Into The Spider-Verse, may not have set the global box office alight (at ‘only’ $384 million, it’s comfortably the lowest-grossing Spider-Man movie), but its envelope-pushing animation, and sheer vibrancy, not only saw it hailed as a game-changer for the medium, but landed it an Oscar for Best Animated Feature. But fill those shoes it did, for Across The Spider-Verse is one of the year’s most astounding triumphs, expanding the Multiverse-hopping coming-of-age story of its young Spider-Man, Miles Morales, while taking creative and storytelling risks aplenty and once again pushing the limits of what is possible in an animated movie. Not bad for a film that was cut in two midway through production (forming the in-the-works final part of the trilogy, Beyond The Spider-Verse), and which apparently lived in a state of constant creative upheaval, with crucial elements — including its cliffhanger ending — coming and going right the way up until release. As Empire found when it sat down on Zoom in August with producers/writers Phil Lord and Christopher Miller, and the film’s trio of directors, Kemp Powers, Justin K. Thompson and Joaquim Dos Santos.
Now that we’re a few months down the line, is there a moment in the film that you wanted to land in a particular way? And were then relieved to see that it did?
Kemp Powers: Honestly, one of the most gratifying things personally was the incredible popularity of Spider-Punk. Because that was a character that really had to earn his way into the film on multiple levels. So to see the cosplayer costumes people have sent me, it seems like you can’t imagine a world in which that character didn’t exist.