TV & Movies

Across the Spider-Verse directors reveal “huge” scrapped live-action scenes

Cameron Frew
Miles Morales in Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse and Andrew Garfield in live-action in Spider-Man: No Way HomeSony Pictures

The directors of Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse have opened up about navigating the movie’s many, many worlds, and how they ended up removing “huge” live-action sequences.

Five years, we were introduced to Miles Morales and an eclectic troupe of Spider-People. Across the Spider-Verse turns everything we saw back then up to 11, catapulting him through the multiverse into strange new worlds, from Nueva York to Earth-42.

Just like in the first movie, there’s a lot of juggling going on with the animation; certain characters are rendered in different ways to others, depending on their art style, and often while they’re sharing the screen.

It’s a tremendous balancing act, but things get even stranger when live-action moments are added to the mix – and there were originally a lot more. Spoilers to follow…

Across the Spider-Verse had “huge” live-action scenes

There are three major live-action moments in Across the Spider-Verse: we see Andrew Garfield’s Peter when Captain Stacy dies in The Amazing Spider-Man, Tobey Maguire’s Peter in Uncle Ben’s death scene, and Donald Glover reprising his role as Aaron Davis from the MCU.

In a new interview with Variety following the film’s release, co-directors Joaquim Dos Santos, Kemp Powers, and Justin K. Thompson spoke about exploring the various “canon events” – things that must happen in each timeline, or the universe will implode – and how they originally planned on integrating other live-action scenes.

“We had even bigger ambitions,” Thompson said, to which Powers added: “There were times when we had huge live-action sequences in the film, and it just turned into a bad joke. Even we didn’t like it anymore. And we just said, ‘OK, enough, let’s make sure that it’s something precise that gets the most bang for the buck, and speaks to the story.”

While there’s always a chance we could see more in Beyond the Spider-Verse – Tom Holland’s Spidey is curiously never seen, but only alluded to – a live-action Miles Morales movie is in the works. It’s unclear if Shameik Moore will make the leap to take on the role, but he’s certainly game for it.

“I want to wear the mask. I want that real bad… I don’t want to pat myself on the back or anything, but I would put my entire soul into having the best live-action Spider-Man performance that we have ever witnessed,” he told Men’s Health.

Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse is in cinemas now. Check out our other coverage below:

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