Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse producers Phil Lord and Chris Miller recently sat down with Collider to talk about their new animated feature. Though the film hasn’t yet been released, the discussion eventually moved to the recently-announced sequel and spinoff. Both of which are currently in development at Sony.
“Well, it’s still really early and the movie hasn’t come out yet,” said Miller. “So we’re not gonna count any chickens at this point. But obviously, the idea of the multiverse opens up a lot of possibilities–infinite, you might say, possibilities. So it’s really exciting to think about what could [happen], and there are a lot of things that really are engaging to us. But, you know, it’s still really early.”
There are probably a number of reasons why the pair isn’t seriously considering a sequel yet. But the main hold-up is likely due to the huge amount of effort involved in crafting Into the Spider-Verse’s look. Apparently, Sony’s marketing department asked them to come up with a name for the unprecedented animation style. However, the producers found themselves at a loss.
“It’s a new thing that hasn’t been done,” said Miller. “From the very beginning, we were like, ‘Can we make a movie that feels like you’re walking inside of a comic book?’ It took us years to figure out the process of both CG and 2D hand-drawn animation and all of these comic book textures and designs woven in into something that feels like every frame is a painting.”
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Lord intimated that a production of this magnitude could only be handled by multiple directors. In this case, the trio of Bob Persichetti, Peter Ramsey, and Rodney Rothman joined forces at the helm. To hear Lord tell it, each filmmaker brought his own strength to churn out the best possible product.
“This is such a gargantuan task,” related Lord. “You need people with all kinds of different superpowers, and each of those guys has something to offer that we don’t know how to do.”
Lord went on to explain that their vision for Into the Spider-Verse demanded the creation of new technology as well. “Someone on our team had to write new software and we kept saying, ‘We want you to break the systems and want the server to melt down and want people to, like, not know how to use these tools anymore,’” he said. “And we succeeded.”
You can hear more of what Lord and Miller had to say in the video below. Let us know what you think of their remarks in the comment section!
