Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse Wins Best Animated Feature at 2024 Critics Choice Awards

Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse thwipped up an early win at Sunday's 2024 Critics Choice Awards. The sequel to 2018's Into the Spider-Verse was voted Best Animated Movie by the Critics Choice Association (CCA) ahead of the ceremony, which is airing on The CW. Just one week after Hayao Miyazaki's The Boy and the Heron took home the Golden Globe in the animated movie category, Across the Spider-Verse won out over the former in a year that included fellow nominees Elemental (Pixar), Wish (Walt Disney Animation Studios), Nimona (Netflix), and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem (Paramount Pictures).

Spider-Verse 2 is also nominated for Best Score (composer Daniel Pemberton) and Best Visual Effects, the only animated movie in the category; nominees include The Creator, Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3, Poor Things, Oppenheimer, and Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One.

At 95% certified fresh, Spider-Verse 2 was among the best-reviewed movies of 2023 on Rotten Tomatoes. The movie also scored a 94% approval with audiences, the same as 2018's Into the Spider-Verse; that film ultimately won Best Animated Feature at the Critics Choice Awards, the Golden Globes, and the Oscars.

The Critics Choice Awards win comes just before Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse swings back into IMAX theaters on Jan. 19 for the first time since its original theatrical run last June. In the second chapter of the Spider-Verse saga, Miles Morales (voice of Shameik Moore) reunites with Gwen Stacy (Hailee Steinfeld) and then encounters the Spider-Society: an elite team of Spider-People charged with protecting the Multiverse from canon-breaking events and other anomalies. But when the heroes clash on how to handle a new threat — Spider-Man's "nemesis," the Spot (Jason Schwartzman) — Miles finds himself pitted against Miguel O'Hara/Spider-Man 2099 (Oscar Isaac) and the other Spiders, and must redefine what it means to be a hero so he can save the people he loves most.

Sony Pictures Animation is currently developing Spider-Verse 3, titled Spider-Man: Beyond the Spider-Verse. In a recent interview at the Golden Globes, producer and co-writer Phil Lord said that Beyond will be "a very satisfying conclusion" to the Spider-Verse trilogy.

"It goes even more emotionally deep into the relationships between Miles, Gwen, Peter B., [and Miles'] parents," Lord said, adding Beyond will address where Across left Miles: stranded on Earth-42, an alternate universe where his uncle Aaron Davis (Mahershala Ali) is his enemy and Miles is the Prowler.

"The big thing that's interesting for Miles [in Beyond the Spider-Verse] is how do you deal with a sense of betrayal and turn it into something affirmative?" Lord said. "And I think that the thing that we try to do with these movies is represent goodness and show how the love that the characters in the movie have for Miles translates into his growth and success."