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When Across The Spider-Verse left us with that cliffhanger ending in the summer of 2023, Beyond The Spider-Verse was due to hit theaters less than a year later in March 2024. Cut to it being nearly two years since that previous release date and we’re still awaiting the next Spider-Verse sequel. Will next summer finally bring us the next chapter? Sony Pictures Animation presidents Kristine Belson and Damien de Froberville have shared updates on what’s going on with it.
As of late, Beyond The Spider-Verse co-writers and producers Phil Lord and Chris Miller have been splitting their focus between the new installment and helming Project Hail Mary, which was shot in late 2024 and hits theaters next month. Here’s what de Froberville said about how that’s affected the production to The Hollywood Reporter:
They’ve been present. Sending notes. They set up their Hail Mary edits right in the courtyard here. Just to be close to Spider-Verse.
As announced in late 2024, Lord and Miller left directing duties to Bob Persichetti and Justin K. Thompson during their work on Project Hail Mary, but have been splitting up their duties between the two movies. Persichetti co-helmed Into The Spider-Verse and Thompson was a co-director on Across the Spider-Verse.
The two Spider-Verse sequels were initially supposed to come out close to one another when Lord and Miller started production on both films at the same time. But when Across reportedly proved to be a more ambitious film, resources went completely to the sequel prior to its 2023 release. There were also allegedly some story elements of Beyond that got reworked quite a bit over the years, as well as the 2023 SAG-AFTRA strike disturbing the movie’s production as well.
One animator also claimed Across “barely” made its own release date, and alleged 11-hour days seven days a week among the crew in order to make it. When the Sony Pictures Animation bosses were asked if there’s strains among the animators right now regarding Beyond The Spider-Verse making its summer 2027 release date, Belson said this:
Nobody has to work on a show they don’t want to work on. Even though you’ll hear — whether it’s Spider-Verse or other shows — that people go through these really difficult crunch times, everybody wants to be on the most ambitious and most exciting shows.
De Froberville also added that some shifts have been made to Sony Picture Animation’s workflow since Across The Spider-Verse. In his words:
We made some changes to the pipeline to, not avoid — because Chris and Phil are always going to iterate late — but to lessen the amount of iteration on the back end. We brought on a live-action DP, Alice Brooks. She’s been directing camera in a way that we hadn’t done on Spider-Verse before. We’re in animation on Spider-Verse now. Because the directors and Chris and Phil have a chance to iterate so much early on while we’re in story, and truly visualize what it’s going look like by the time those sequences flow into the Imageworks pipeline, there’s way less changes.
Beyond The Spider-Verse is set to come to theaters on June 18, 2027 – with the latest release date shift being made over the summer to play on more IMAX screens. As we count down the days until the movie closes out the Spider-Verse trilogy, you can see the latest Sony Pictures Animation movie, Goat, in theaters now. You can also check out what other upcoming Spider-Man movies and TV shows are on the way.
