The new year’s right around the corner which means another exciting year of big blockbuster comic book movies. While Ant-Man and The Flashes of the world are getting the most buzz in terms of live-action, there’s no comic book film more highly anticipated than Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse. The Sony animated sequel featuring the return of Shameik Moore’s Miles Morales in the lead Spider costume is finally coming in June. The upcoming film is the second in the planned animated Spider-Verse trilogy, but the series wasn’t always planned that way. In early stages of development Across the Spider-Verse and the third film Beyond the Spider-Verse were conceived as one film. Now Spider-Verse Senior Character Animator Ere Santos shed more light on the Avengers: Endgame level scale of the original sequel.

Speaking exclusively to The Direct, Santos opened up about the original pitch for the sequel. "[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.” Santos said and continued on, “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." He further elaborated on the Endgame level the producers wanted. “But it would have been good. 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 said.

This Endgame level plans changed when the film was delayed from its early 2022 release date and split up into two movies. Across the Spider-verse Part Two would then change titles to Beyond the Spider-Verse soon after that. Splitting up the sequel allowed the Spider-Verse team time to “spread things out” to give everything “more time to breathe” which he said the final product really needed. Santos specifically explained, “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 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." Santos also noted the original planned opening of the film was “insanely ambitious”. The beginning is still ambitious, but now they didn’t need to cram two movies into one. There have been many overstuffed comic book sequels, especially in the Spider-Man universe so for the sake of cohesive storytelling, this was most likely the best call.

miles morales in spider man across the spider verse
Image via Sony

RELATED: New 'Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse' Image Sees Miles Soaring Over the City

However, with all these changes during the production, Santos made it clear that the story never changed. The only real change was it being split up into two movies. The epic Sider-Verse conclusion is still jammed-packed with crazy moments that are sure to make comic book fans really happy. In terms of an Endgame level feel, the latest trailer and poster can make web-head fanatics rest easy as Across the Spider-Verse has a massive amount of characters in it. Besides main characters like Miles Morales, Spider-Gwen, Spider-Man 2099, and Spider-Woman, the film features an ungodly amount of Spider-People. To name a few examples, there’s PS4 Spidey, The Spectacular Spider-Man from the popular short-lived animated series, Spider-Punk, and Japanese Spider-Man. On top of that, the visuals and vastly different art styles look even more breathtaking than they did in the critically-acclaimed original. Despite these comments from Santos, all signs point to Across the Spider-Verse having a grand epic-scale outing. As such, it’s going to be exciting to see what secrets this second film in the trilogy holds.

Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse is swinging into theaters on June 2, 2023. The film will see Miles and Spider-Gwen on another crazy multiverse adventure versus the underrated Spidey villain The Spot. This will lead into Beyond the Spider-Verse which is set to hit theaters in 2024. Until we can re-enter the Spider-Verse, check out the latest trailer for Across the Spider-Verse below.