Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse was originally announced as a two-part movie, though the next instalment was eventually given its own title, Beyond the Spider-Verse. Could this trilogy be where Miles Morales' story ends, though?
During a recent interview with The Direct, lead character animator Ere Santos revealed that the upcoming sequel was originally planned as an Avengers: Endgame-style conclusion to the franchise. "[We were asking] 'Wait, so this is what a two-and-a-half-hour movie?'" he recalls. "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 adds. "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."
After 2018's Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse won an Oscar for "Best Animated Feature," why would Sony Pictures ever consider wrapping the franchise up? We can only assume it's because there are live-action plans for Miles on screen, possibly explaining rumours that the teenager will be part of Marvel Studios' next Spider-Man trilogy.
That's pure speculation on our part, of course, and Santos would go on to add that the team working on the sequels appreciated getting some extra "breathing room."
"It was a really ambitious movie, and at the beginning, it was insanely ambitious, versus what it is now," the artist explains. "It's still super ambitious, but it was like trying to fit two movies into one essentially. But now things can breathe a little bit more."
With Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse set to include everyone from the video game version of Peter Parker to The Spectacular Spider-Man's web-slinger, it's hard to imagine how any future movies could top what we're getting over the next few years, anyway. Plans to wrap the series up may have also changed, though it's arguably better to end on a high.
Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse swings into theaters on June 2, 2023.