Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse Snubbed for Best Picture at 2024 Critics Choice Awards

‘Tis the season… Awards season! As 2023 winds down, some of the most highly-anticipated films are being released while various guilds and organizations get ready to award their favorite projects of the year. Today, the nominations for the Critics’ Choice Awards were announced, and Barbie, Oppenheimer, and Poor Things dominated the list. The three films are up for Best Picture alongside Past Lives, Killers of the Flower Moon, The Color Purple, Maestro, The Holdovers, American Fiction, and Saltburn. However, there is one fan-favorite 2023 film missing from the list: Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse. 

Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse did receive nominations for Best Visual Effects, Best Animated Film, and Best Score. However, there are many fans who would have liked to see it in the Best Picture list. While some may be surprised by the snub, it’s actually fairly common for the CCA to save animated films for their own category. In fact, Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse was also left out of the Best Picture category back in 2019.

For Best Animated film, Across the Spider-Verse will be competing against Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem, Wish, The Boy and the Heron, Elemental, and Nimona. 

Why Were Changes Made To Across the Spider-Verse?

Ever since Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse became available on VOD earlier this year, fans began noticing differences from the theatrical cut. Phil Lord and Chris Miller spoke to GamesRadar+ about the changes and explained why the home release was a little different.

“There was an international version that was made almost two months before the movie came out because it had to be translated into different languages and these French censors have to decide what the rating of the movie is in Europe,” Miller explained. “The team at [Sony Pictures] Imageworks still had some shots that they felt they could do better for the finished version. So, they cleaned up and tweaked those things.”

“Certain crew members – people in the sound department or on the animation team – were like, ‘Oh, could we do this instead?’” He would add. “Let’s do the best possible version we can. Because it’s a multiverse movie, it’s like there’s a multiverse of the movie – that was really the reasoning behind it. It was trying to make the best possible version that everyone was going to be the proudest of.”

Stay tuned for more updates about Spider-Man: Beyond the Spider-Verse, which was originally supposed to come out next year.

Are you surprised Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse wasn’t nominated for Best Picture by the Critics Choice Association? Tell us in the comments!