Ere Santos, who serves as the senior character animator for Across the Spider-Verse and Beyond the Spider-Verse, recently spoke to The Direct where he revealed that they initially started out with plans for just one movie. “[We were asking] ‘Wait, so this is what a two-and-a-half-hour movie?’ This is a really large story that they’re telling. And with all the arcs that they wanted to put in, we were just thinking this was going to be an intense, quick, fast-paced, high-energy movie,” Santos said.
“But it would have been good,” he continued. “It would have been like, what they were planning was gonna be like Endgame-esque stuff. Like it was huge. And what they’re planning is still huge.” Santos then pointed out that the producers made the right decision of working on two sequels instead. “But then kind of spreading it out and into two gives it that breathing room we all felt that it really needed to kind of go, ‘Okay, what do you what do we need to set up in the second movie? And how can we resolve it in the third movie? Or not?’ I don’t know. We’ll have to see,” he said. Beyond the Spider-Verse was initially meant to be Part 2 of Across the Spider-Verse. However, the title has since been changed and this somehow suggests that the third movie will round out the story. With that in mind, Beyond the Spider-Verse could be greatly similar to Avengers: Endgame. Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse will hit theaters on June 2, 2023. Spider-Man: Beyond the Spider-Verse, is scheduled for release on March 29, 2024.
