Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse Directors Tease Ambitious Sequel Goals

Marvel fans will finally get the opportunity to return to the Spider-Verse later this year. Four years after Spider-man: Into the Spider-Verse arrived in theaters, the franchise is coming back to the big screen with Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse (Part One). This new movie will be leaving the universe of Miles Morales and traveling to multiple different realities, each with their own unique animation style. For all intents and purposes, Across the Spider-Verse was a bigger challenge than its predecessor.

While speaking to Collider about their new series, The Afterparty, Spider-Verse producers Phil Lord and Chris Miller opened up a bit about their ambitious animated sequel. 

"It is, as Phil said, a very ambitious sequel, because we didn't want to just sort of do the same thing again," Miller said. "So, the idea that we would be going to different dimensions really opened up an opportunity artistically, to have each world have its own art style and to be able to push the folks at Imageworks to develop a way to have each dimension feel like it was drawn by a different artist's hand. And seeing the development of that stuff is breathtaking. It's the reason that we keep doing it because it's so hard to get it right."

"But the opportunity is to push animation in directions that it hasn't gone yet," added Lord. "That's what we're always trying to do. That's what Chris tried to do with Afterparty. It's what we tried to do with Mitchells vs. the Machines. It's a problem if that's your brand, because it means you can't just go like, 'Oh, I do these paintings with dots and lines. I'll just do a bunch of those for the end of my career.' For us, unfortunately we have to keep changing it."

Into the Spider-Verse was an instant all-timer for fans and critics upon its release, and it went on to win the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature at the Oscars. The pressure has been on the sequel ever since it was announced. There's a lot to live up to, but it seems like the entire creative team is set on raising the bar even higher the second time around.

Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse (Part One) arrives in theaters on October 7th.