2018s Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse took audiences by surprise, because no one expected a solid Spidey flick from Sony Pictures. Not only did the film amaze audiences, but it quickly became the most-acclaimed Spidey flick to-date.
The film did a fantastic job of balancing a number of main characters while having a great multi-dimensional story with very few plot holes. It’s easy to assume that plans for all of these plot shifts and twists were there from the beginning. But that couldn’t be further from the truth.
The film’s producer and co-writer Phil Lord revealed that the story constantly evolved and reconfigured throughout production.
Lord posted a picture to Twitter of whiteboards full of story points that reinforce the notion that the team retooled the third act of the film, shortly before the film hit theaters, twice.
According to Lord:
“We did a big shakeup of the story less than a year from release and we had to figure out how to reshape sequences we had already boarded and animated and fold them in with new stuff.
Oh and we rebroke the whole third act… This is not a flex. This is embarrassing that we hadn’t figured it out this late in the process. It’s more to illustrate that it IS a process. Always.”
Editor Andrew Leviton confirms Lord’s statement, saying they ‘rebroke’ the third act again the July before release with an additional whiteboard. Leviton locked himself in the edit bay for three days and mocked up the changes based on the board.
Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse won the Oscar for Best Animated Film and nabbed $375.5 million at the global box office. They did all of this on a $90 million budget. There’s plans for a sequel, stay tuned to PopcornSushi for any updates as they hit.
