No one expected that 2018’s “Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse” wouldn’t just be the very best ‘Spider-Man’ film of all time, but actually one of the best superhero films, period. When it was announced, film fans were too preoccupied with the live-action Spidey to really concern themselves with what Phil Lord and Chris Miller had up their sleeves on the animated side. But when the film was released, it was critically acclaimed and turned into a big hit for Sony. And according to new tweets on social media, ‘Spider-Verse’ wasn’t fully polished from the get-go, as you may imagine.
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Phil Lord took to Twitter recently to share some pretty startling pictures of some whiteboards that were filled up with story beats in light of how the filmmakers had to completely retool the third act of ‘Spider-Verse’ less than a year before it was released.
Lord tweeted, “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.”
The idea that ‘Spider-Verse’ was greatly reworked less than a year before it was released is pretty startling, especially given how animation is such a time-intensive medium and the finished product was so great. However, that also speaks to the creativity and vision of everyone involved that they were able to take the film, “rebreak” it, and still emerge with something worthy of an Oscar.
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In fact, Lord followed that original tweet with another that talked about how he wasn’t trying to brag but instead show the process, “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.”
But Lord’s tweet was only the beginning. Editor Andrew Leviton, who also worked on ‘Spider-Verse’ not only confirmed what his producer said, but added a new whiteboard that showed how the filmmakers “rebroke” the film more than just the one time.
Leviton tweeted, “That’s the white board for only one of the Act III ‘rebreaks…We rebroke it again the July before release with another beautiful mind-y whiteboard. I locked myself in my edit bay for 3 days and mocked something up based on this.”
As mentioned, “Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse” went on to win the Oscar in 2019 for Best Animated Film. And if you’re so inclined, you can quarantine with the film by streaming it on Netflix.
