Slowly but surely, Spider-Man: Beyond The Spider-Verse is coming. It’s been three years now since Across The Spider-Verse arrived, taking everything
Slowly but surely, Spider-Man: Beyond The Spider-Verse is coming. It’s been three years now since Across The Spider-Verse arrived, taking everything that made Into The Spider-Verse such a delight and maximising it – not only sprawling across multiple universes, but delivering the first half of a huge two-part narrative for Miles Morales. There’s a lot riding, then, on Beyond – which will not only bring the entire story home, but could secure the series a place in the list of ‘best trilogies of all time’ if it manages to stick the landing.
As Spider-Verse writer-producers Phil Lord and Christopher Miller – fresh from Project Hail Mary – recently told The Empire Podcast, progress is well underway for Beyond The Spider-Verse’s 2027 release. “We are deep, deep in it,” says Miller. One of the key technical challenges this time around is trying to make an animated movie on the expanded 1.43:1 IMAX ratio. “We’re actually going today to the IMAX headquarters to see what the footage looks like at scale, and make sure that it has the resolution that it needs to look gorgeous,” Miller notes. “We’re chugging away in the edit room with the team, and it’s coming together really well. It’s a lot of movie, and a lot to do.” Safe to say, the pressure’s on. “You got to keep doing something that hasn’t been done before. That’s all you got to do,” deadpans Miller. “Easy!”
On such a huge canvas, audiences will get to see every moment up-close. “Details matter,” says Lord. “The thing that’s a joy about those pictures is that everyone on the crew is so good at what they do. So you just sit around, marvel at all these brilliant artists, and then we get to work with these great filmmakers, sit in a room all day, and just try to make everything incrementally better together. It’s a lot of fun.”
All that, and the duo is currently getting things moving on 24 Jump Street too – the long-awaited follow-up to 2014’s 22 Jump Street. “We developed a ’23 Jump Street’, and I think this is just out of respect for that,” laughs Lord of the title. “We’re calling this 24, out of respect for the dead.” The film is being directed by Rodney Rothman – one of the directors of Into The Spider-Verse – who is in the process of revising the script. “There was a script that was made years ago. And the dust has been blown off of it, and it’s being rewritten right now,” says Miller. Here’s hoping it’s tidy and rad and powerful.
Listen to the full Lord and Miller interview on the Empire Podcast. Project Hail Mary is out now on Prime Video and on digital platforms.
