Spoilers for Across the Spiderverse

It’s no surprise that the popular movie Spiderman: Across the Spiderverse was successful. It has grossed $380.4 million in the U.S., with around $320.9 million internationally. This amounts to a whopping total of $683.3 million. And, this is only the second movie of the trilogy. Across the Spiderverse exceeds the first movie of the trilogy, Spiderman: Into the Spiderverse by nearly $298.3 million. It’s without a doubt that with each new Spiderverse movie, the grossing value exceeds the previous by a lot. This might mean that the final movie to the series will be the greatest of all three. However, we are unsure of when we will get Spiderman: Beyond the Spiderverse, which is the last movie of the series. 

Across the Spiderverse features a rollercoaster of emotions. The main character, Miles Morales, learns that a family member will unfortunately die at the hands of “The Spot.” The Spot is the antagonist of Across the Spiderverse and Beyond the Spiderverse. His human identity is Jonathon Ohnn, a scientist working for Kingpin, a notorious crimelord. The Spot was created when Ohnn was sucked into the super-collider Miles and his friends destroyed. Miles’ destiny was changed when he was bitten by a radioactive spider. Because of this, a new canon event was made for him. This canon event is exactly what Miles had learned and feared. Miles, furious that this existed, tries to retaliate and run away. The Spider-Society does everything in their power to hinder Miles’ progress, but it’s no use. He has already run away. 

It was first said that the release date for the Beyond the Spiderverse movie would be Mar. 29, 2024. However, it was taken down and further postponed. Rather than knowing what day it was postponed to, there was no set date. Its debut could be a few years from now, such as 2025, or it could be five years from now, such as the time gap between Into the Spiderverse and Across the Spiderverse.

Not only that, multiple people were desperate to know what is going to happen after an unfortunate cliffhanger at the end of Across the Spiderverse. This has left fans mad, as they expected an actual ending to the movie.

“It was very sad having a cliffhanger at the end and then a delay on the next movie.” said sophomore Justin Nguyen when asked how he felt about the cliffhanger and the status of Beyond the Spiderverse. “It wasn’t the greatest initial feeling when I heard about it. I was kinda disappointed because it took a while for the second movie to come out.” 

We can cut the editors, artists, producers, animators, and film writers a bit of slack. According to the website Collider, with over 1,000 animators working nearly 11 hours every day of the week, almost 100 of these animators quit. These 100 quit because they couldn’t handle the stress and expectations placed on them by the filmmakers almost everyday of the week. The rest knew that if they left, all the work that they had drawn and sketched would be fruitless. 

The article Collider also mentioned that Phil Lord, one of the film producers who allegedly made himself ‘king’ of final decisions, was hard to work with. Every single final decision was made by Lord. Lord was very specific on the changes and level of perfection that he wanted. 

Beyond the Spiderverse should be better when working conditions are better and calmer. This will unfortunately lead to perhaps a long time until the movie comes out. This is because even with almost 900 animators working day and night to produce Across the Spiderverse, it still took almost five years for it to premiere. 

With no set date, terrible working conditions, and a cliffhanger leaving fans desperate, we can only hope that Beyond the Spiderverse will come soon.

Graphic courtesy of Rachel Lee