When Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse was first announced, the end of its title came with a little disclaimer – (Part One). The highly-anticipated sequel to 2018’s surprise hit Into the Spider-Verse was supposed to be a two-part event, but the creatives behind the project ultimately decided on turning (Part Two) into its own third film, Beyond the Spider-Verse. Unbeknownst to everyone, however, there was an even more ambitious idea that came before the two-part sequel pitch.
Speaking exclusively with The Direct, lead character animator Ere Santos revealed the Spider-Verse follow-up was originally going to be one massive movie. Instead of a trilogy, the second Spider-Verse would have completed a duology, and it would have made up the majority of the two film’s storytelling. Santos described the initial concept as being similar to the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s Avengers: Endgame in its size, elaborating:
[We were asking] ‘Wait, so this is what a two-and-a-half-hour movie?’ This is a really large story that they’re telling. And with all the arcs that they wanted to put in, we were just thinking this was going to be an intense, quick, fast-paced, high-energy movie. But it would have been good. It would have been like, what they were planning was gonna be like ‘Endgame’-esque stuff. Like it was huge. And what they’re planning is still huge. Ere Santos
Santos then went on to clarify that, in the end, splitting the story up between more films was the right move. As is to be expected, three movies allows for more space to tell a proper tale, and as the animator describes it, gives the characters and their arcs “breathing room“:
But then kind of spreading it out and into two gives it that breathing room we all felt that it really needed to kind of go, ‘Okay, what do we need to set up in the second movie? And how can we resolve it in the third movie? Or not?’ I don’t know. We’ll have to see. It was a really ambitious movie, and at the beginning, it was insanely ambitious, versus what it is now. It’s still super ambitious, but it was like trying to fit two movies into one essentially. But now things can breathe a little bit more.
Ere Santos
Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse swings into theaters on June 2nd, 2023, and from the looks of the promotional material, it’s still going to be a pretty epic journey.
Source: The Direct
