Sony Pictures takes 'Spider-Man' into a bold new world

Reuters - Sony Pictures this year has expanded its Spider-Man universe with successful spin-off "Venom" and now the company is about to release animated feature "Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse", which sees a handful of new versions of the Marvel Comics' webslinger swing onto the big screen. The risk appears to have paid off with the film, produced by 'Lego Movie''s Phil Lord and Chris Miller, getting rave reviews and looking set for awards season after being nominated for a Golden Globe as well as an Annie. In this iteration, the lead role of Spider-Man is not the traditional Peter Parker, but Afro-Latino Miles Morales, who first appeared in an alternative universe of the comic books. However, Morales isn't the only Spider-Man in the new film. He's joined by the monochrome Spider-Man Noir, the colorful female superhero Spider-Gwen, the Loony Toon-esque Spider-Ham, and manga fighter Peni Parker, who all find themselves thrown into Morales' universe after an experiment goes wrong. The clash of styles creates a fusion of animation. Phil Lord told Reuters "That was the dream that we could have different styles in the same frame and it would look wrong and right at the same time." Chris Miller added "It was both CG animation and 2D hand drawn animation together so every frame took 4 times as long to make as a regular CG movie because the loving artist's hand was evident on it and all these different styles and genres but all feeling like you're walking into the pages of a comic book." The film pays homage to Spider-Man's creators, Stan Lee and Steve Ditko, who both died this year, with a special post-credits scene as well as a cameo by Lee. "Those are the godparents of all these characters and they meant a lot to us personally in our lives," said Lord. "We were 11 years old in a comic book shop, both cracking the spine of a book and seeing a letter from Stan Lee saying 'Welcome to the party. You're one of us.' And that's what we think his legacy is, at least for us," he added. Because of its success with critics, there is already talk about making a franchise with the characters with rumors that the next film will feature only Spider-Women. Miller said "Obviously we tried to make the best movie we could here and obviously the idea of the multiverse opens up a million possibilities but we were just trying to tell a story that worked for this one which was a coming of age story for a kid, his family, finding a group of friends and finding you're not alone and rising up to a challenge." "At the end of the day, it's a really simple human story that transcends the Spider-Man myth," said Lord. "Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse" goes on release in the US on December 12.