Sony’s Animated ‘Spider-Verse’ Expanding with Spin-Off, Sequel
It’s just a few weeks until Sony’s highly anticipated (and, if we’re being honest, deeply brilliant) animated superhero feature “Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse” hits screens nationwide, and already Sony is plotting both a sequel and a spin-off. The Spider-Verse is expanding rapidly.
Joaquim dos Santos, a beloved animation director nicknamed “Dr. Fight” by fans for his expert ability to choreograph and stage action set pieces and fight scenes, has been tapped by Sony to direct the as-yet-untitled Spider-Verse sequel that will again center on half-black/half-Latino Brooklynite Miles Morales (presumably voiced by Shameik Moore), per The Hollywood Reporter. Dos Santos has memorably directed episodes of “Justice League Unlimited,” “Avatar: The Last Airbender,” and its even-more-progressive spin-off “The Legend of Korra.” David Callaham, who worked on 2014’s “Godzilla” and 2020’s “Wonder Woman 1984,” will write the screenplay. Dos Santos is one most talented up-and-coming creative forces in animation, and most recently has been working on DreamWorks’ Netflix series “Voltron: Legendary Defender,” alongside Lauren Montgomery.
And we bring up Montgomery because, in the same Hollywood Reporter article, it is noted that she has been tapped to direct a Spider-Verse spin-off centered around female characters. Montgomery also contributed to “Avatar: The Last Airbender” and “The Legend of Korra,” and has directed a handful of excellent direct-to-home-video DC animated features for Warner Bros. She, like dos Santos, are incredible talents who will add a lot to their respective project. The Spider-Women project, to be written by Australian screenwriter Bek Smith (she wrote on the CBS series “Zoo”), will serve as a complimentary project and not a direct sequel. Deadline reports that it will focus on “three generations of women with Spidey powers” and speculates that one of the characters “could very well be Spider-Gwen” (spoiler alert: she’s a star in ‘Into the Spider-Verse’ and will 100% be in this spin-off).
While these are far from sure-things (“Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse” hasn’t even opened for crying out loud, and Sony has planned similar spin-off films in the past that never came together), but it’s a good sign that the studio is thinking that there is plenty of story left to tell in this Spidery multiverse (Chris Miller and Phil Lord are expected to return to oversee the projects). It also continues Sony's Spider-Man-adjacent hot streak after "Venom" became a surprise smash earlier this fall.