Phil Lord and Chris Miller have established themselves as two of Hollywood's most innovative filmmakers, but if their firing from Solo: A Star Wars Story is any indication, their approach to making movies doesn't always work for everyone.
As we first reported on Toonado.com earlier today, Vulture has just published a very damaging exposé about the working conditions on Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse. While the sequel has received widespread critical acclaim and just passed $500 million at the worldwide box office, those working on it had to endure some pretty brutal sounding conditions.
While Miller was supposedly absent for much of the time, it appears Lord is a perfectionist whose "inability to conceptualize 3-D animation during the early planning stages and his preference to edit fully rendered work instead" caused many headaches for animation artists.
The full report is essential reading as it features in-depth descriptions of what it was like working on the sequel from four different artists. The gist, though, is that part of the reason it was delayed was due to the movie sitting idle for up to six months while Lord continued to tinker with the project.
As a result, there are those who say they were working 11-hour days for seven days a week, all in an effort to make up for the time they lost. It appears Lord was more crucial in the filmmaking process than even the movie's directors, overruling them after seeking final approval for every single sequence.
100 artists ultimately chose to walk away, though producer Amy Pascal says that's not unusual for a movie which hired "over a thousand" people to bring it to life.
She admits that major changes were made to the narrative and visuals during production, but adds: "One of the things about animation that makes it such a wonderful thing to work on is that you get to keep going until the story is right. If the story isn’t right, you have to keep going until it is."
However, Pascal has limited sympathy for those who had to repeatedly change scenes at Lord's request. "I guess, 'Welcome to making a movie," she notes.
One anonymous artist says, "This production has been death by a thousand paper cuts." Another, meanwhile, reveals that Beyond the Spider-Verse was not being worked on at the same time as this latest instalment, meaning "There’s no way that movie’s coming out then...Everyone’s been fully focused on Across the Spider-Verse and barely crossing the finish line. And now it’s like, Oh, yeah, now we have to do the other one."
Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse is an incredible movie and, while it's a shame to hear that the experience of working on it was a gruelling one, some will argue the ends (which is among the greatest animated movies ever made) justified the means.
Do you think Beyond the Spider-Verse will meet its planned March 2024 release date?