Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse Filmmakers Drop Fun Secrets and Intel – Quarantine Watch Party

On Wednesday night, the creative brains behind the Academy Award winning Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse joined Comicbook.com’s Quarantine Watch Party for a unified viewing of the movie with fans from around the world. Not only did the film’s Miles Morales star Shameik Moore join the festivities, but directors Bob Persichetti, Peter Ramsey, and Rodney Rothman were live tweeting their experience, along with writer/producer Phil Lord and producer Chris Miller. The event became a worldwide trend on Twitter’s “Entertainment” tab, offering more fans the opportunity to essentially watch the beloved Marvel film by Sony Animation with those who made it.

By the time the Quarantine Watch Party was over, the event drummed up more 16,000 tweets using #QuarantineWatchParty and #SpiderVerse. These numbers don’t include the thousands of tweets which came in response to others or shared photos, facts, or other commentary during the event without the hashtags. It was one of the biggest Quarantine Watch Party events to date, rivaling James Gunn’s Guardians of the Galaxy event from early April and topping the individual nights of Avengers: Infinity War and Avengers: Endgame which made headlines at the end of the month.

Throughout the Wednesday event, dozens of reveals came from the filmmakers as they offered their thoughts and perspective, in addition to answering fans who were tossing questions throughout the film. Below, we rounded up some of the most fun and exciting tweets from the Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse Quarantine Watch Party!

Comic Love

It  should come as no surprise that Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse was heavily influenced by Marvel Comics stories. The animated film pulled heavily from designs and stories, one of which Miller attributed directly to a specific artist. It is quite clear where Kingpin’s design in the movie came from: the works of Bill Sinkiewicz.

As it turns out, Miller and the gang have quite a few Spider-Man comics in their possession but one of the most impressive facts is that Miller has Spider-Ham books. As co-director Ramsey pointed out early in the film, it was designed to have the look of the source material to some extent. However, they did note that things like speech bubbles intentionally did not come into play until after Miles had been bitten.

Comics are a great place to start!

 

Writing by Text

In the modern day of communication, it should come as no surprise that Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse called for screenwriting via text. In the image above. Co-director Rothman shared a screenshot from his text thread with Phil Lord where they fleshed out a sequence.

Writing by E-mail

Texting wasn’t the only form of communication which brought the creativity out. In the Times Square sequence which showed how different some things are in this alternate dimension, like the New York Red Sox and Blake Griffin being a basketball player, Rothman wanted to have a reference to Shaun of the Dead 2. He went ahead and e-mailed Edgar Wright about the idea. Causal.

Live-Action Miles

It feeels like it can only be a matter of time until Miles Morales becomes a live-action character. First introduced in Marvel Comics in 2011, the character has become tremendously popular and the Spider-Verse movie only propels that. Should the opportunity come up, Miles’ voice Shameik Moore would love to play the part but does have his own doubts about such a possibility.

42

The number 42 pops up in Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse quite a few times. As the official Spider-Verse Twitter account revealed, the number is included as a means to honor Jackie Robinson, the first African American in Major League Baseball.

Marvel fans can think of other ties to 42 which Miles Morales might have… and Phil Lord is not ruling them out.

 

The Spider-Men

As fans clamor for a live-action Spider-Verse involving all of the actors to have portrayed the character, a sequence which would have brought Tom Holland, Andrew Garfield, and Tobey Maguire into the animated mix was ruled out because the studio said it was  “too soon” for this to happen.

Could this mean the idea is actually in consideration and might happen somewhere down the line?

The References

While we anxiously await the possibilities for all of the Spider-Man actors to one day crossover in animation or live-action, Spider-Man: Into th Spider-Verse did not shy away from referencing the previous big screen appearances. Spider-Man seen holding back a train, dancing down city streets, reaching his arms out wide to hold something together, and more referenced iconic moments by previous actors.

As it turns out, those references were not so easy to get into the film as Rothman points out they called for “so many conversations” to be made possible. 

Spider-Verse 2

To wrap up the night, Lord offered the slightest possible tease of the Spider-Verse sequel which is scheduled to arrive in 2022 — but the studio knew better than to not warn him and the other participants about spoiling what’s to come!

“All I can say is… worked on it all day yesterday and had a ball,” he said. “Watching this got me pumped for all the surprises in store for 2022.”