Before it arrived, expectations weren’t high for 2018’s “Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse”. That might be partly why it was a real shock when it ultimately came to be not just the most acclaimed “Spider-Man” film of all time, but also one of the most lauded superhero films ever.
With the film’s complicated dimensional breaking and narrative twists, you’d think it would have to be planned out to the last detail long before production began. However Phil Lord, the film’s producer and co-writer and one of the major creatives steering the ship, has revealed this week things weren’t as mapped out as you might expect.
Lord posted on Twitter some images of whiteboards filled up with story beats which tie into the fact he and his regular cohort Chris Miller and the other filmmakers had to completely retool the third act – twice – not long before it was released.
Lord says: “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 weight in as well, saying they rebroke the third act again on the July before release with “another beautiful mind-y whiteboard” and Leviton locked himself in the edit bay for three days and mocked something up based on that board.
“Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse” ultimately went on to win the Oscar for Best Animated Film and pulled in $375.5 million at the box-office from a $90 million budget.
So here is the “storywheel” of @SpiderVerse . 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. pic.twitter.com/NYPcaPcXfH
— Phil Lord is staying home (@philiplord) March 22, 2020
