Board 8 > Across the Spiderverse production troubles, Beyond might be next

(+) Yeah! (+)

https://www.vulture.com/2023/06/spider-verse-animation-four-artists-on-making-the-sequel.html

I suppose this shouldnt be the biggest surprise but this fucking sucks to find out, Across is one of my newest favorite movies now.

The production stories were circling a few weeks before the movie came out. It was basically inevitable for this kind of movie. Especially changing things late in the game. I've been on creative teams of size 10, 20, 100 that have the same problem. People think that when you scale to 1000+ and have top tier leaders that that stuff doesn't happen anymore, but it totally does, and it's often even worse. The bigger you are, the more enticing it is to redo everything just to get a couple % better result. It's like in a restaurant when they take a chunk of steak and precisely slice the best bite out of it, and throw away the rest. Except the animators are the meat.

But tbig problem that all the stories highlighted was the bottleneck that Lord created and wasted thousands of months of artist time. That seems super avoidable and without it would've made the production feel way more acceptable, even if the rest of the work was rough.

Seems like Into had the same issues.

Disappointed to hear this about Lord and Miller, whose work I definitely admire. I agree with one of the comments on the article about the need for VFX unionization. It doesn't seem as abusive as something like Naughty Dog's crunch, but certainly feels like an ineffective directing / leadership style.

Theyve announced that Beyond the Spider-Verse will be released in March of next year. Ive seen people say, Oh, they probably worked on it at the same time. Theres no way that movies coming out then. Theres been progress on the pre-production side of things. But as far as the production side goes, the only progress thats been made on the third one is any exploration or tests that were done before the movie was split into two parts. Everyones been fully focused on Across the Spider-Verse and barely crossing the finish line. And now its like, Oh, yeah, now we have to do the other one.

Yikes

Yeah, I absolutely did not expect that release date to be accurate and I really don't know why they said that date. Unless Sony just kind of demanded it. It made no sense with how many times the second movie got delayed.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/6/0/8/AABtbFAAEmGA.jpg

Reminder that Amy Pascal is a hack who doesn't seem to actually know how to make movies.

The leaked Sony emails that came out years ago showed that her and Avi Arad are clueless execs who lucked into a golden goose of a franchise and only have enough creativity to think of ridiculously stupid ways to exploit it (which is why we're getting million awful Spider-Man villain spin-off movies) that sometimes work only because people just really like Spider-Man enough to bail them out despite their brainless suggestions and insights ("There should be a scene where Electro plays EDM music because that's totally hip with the kids today!", "We should set up a Sinister Six movie; WITHOUT Spider-Man in it so we can have our own 'Avengers'!")

was she the one who came up with the whole "Spider-Man posts like a fitness influencer on his instagram" thing

WazzupGenius00 posted...

was she the one who came up with the whole "Spider-Man posts like a fitness influencer on his instagram" thing

You mean she's responsible for the tweeting in the Insomniac games? I liked that part.

I feel like I have to post this email. I think about it every single day. At least, every time a studio executive says or does something completely stupid, which is every single day:

Edit: Apparently there's like a cap or something on images that shrinks them, it made the picture hard to read. Here's a link to it:
https://i.imgur.com/meul9vj.jpg

Some takeaway thoughts:

• The Amazing Spider-Man 2, which despite its critical issues was still one of the highest grossing films released, not being considered a success because it didn't make more money than God is absurd.
• They wanted to trade Spider-Man for Thor and Daredevil??? This was before Thor Ragnarok, so I have no idea why they specifically found those properties desirable.
• This might be my ignorance, but I don't understand how selling the rights fully would still allow them to make animated Spider-Man movies. Also, suddenly making the third film in a live-action franchise trilogy an animated movie is one of the dumbest ideas I've ever heard.
• They believed the Sinister Six movies would make 2 billion dollars. Even if you account it being split up into two parts that's still outrageous.
• Also, this mindset they have that taking all their movies and splitting them into two parts being a great idea to earn more money is- Hey, WAIT A MINUTE...
• The line where they think that the way to make the Sinister Six movie make more money is to add "more exciting and dramatic special effects and also add 'The Amazing Spider-Man' to the title'" has never left my mind, ever. Every time you see some incredibly dumb, cheap change an exec added to a movie, like changing the title of Birds of Prey to make Harley Quinn's name more prominent after it was in theaters, you just know some executive was thinking "This is the big play that's going to make us the billion dollars!"
• Ditching the reboot and going back to "Spider-Man 4" is a truly bottom of the barrel move. One that I'm sure they're still considering after the success of No Way Home...
• Reading "The Amazing Spider-Man: Sinister Six Part 1" and "The Amazing Spider-Man: Sinister Six Part 2" makes me want to projectile vomit.
• "Starring Emma Stone as antagonist Carnage" jesus christ
• "Spider-Man vs. The Amazing Spider-Man" I'm going to fucking cry
• "Toby and Andrew together = about 2 Billion in profits" well i guess they got me there. But that conceited mindset is stunning. I bet they truly thought Morbius was going to *actually* make a "Morbillion" dollars because they added cool special effects and had The Vulture in the trailer.
• "We have plan for a shared universe" their plan was to give every single background character that had ever appeared in a Spider-Man comic their own movie and add "Part 1" and "Part 2" to the titles.
• They wanted to sell the film license to Marvel for 5 BILLION DOLLARS. For just the FILM LICENSE. For the record, Disney paid TWO billion for the ENTIRETY of Star Wars; the rights, the previously released content, and every single book, studio, and sticker sheet Star Wars had ever made.
• After these emails came out Sony got laughed at so hard by every single person who read it they went crawling back to Disney with their tail between their legs and that's why we got Andrew Garfield in Captain America: Civil War. But they were only humbled for, like, seven seconds before the franchise blew up even further in popularity and now they think they can do anything they want again, which is why they think releasing a "Hypno-Hustler" film is a great idea. Perhaps if they add "Spider-Man Presents:" to the title it'll gross 3 billion.

Grand_Kirby posted...

For the record, Disney paid TWO billion for the ENTIRETY of Star Wars; the rights, the previously released content, and every single book, studio, and sticker sheet Star Wars had ever made.

It was four billion, but your point stands.

Do we think that Bad Bunny extremely obscure spider-man villain movie is still happening

edit: oh, as of yesterday there was news that it is probably not

WazzupGenius00 posted...

Do we think that Bad Bunny extremely obscure spider-man villain movie is still happening

edit: oh, as of yesterday there was news that it is probably not

Hadn't heard of this, yeah I can't imagine they make that without Bad Bunny. I'm sure the movie was only put into production because of him, like that old Channing Tatum Gambit movie they tried to get rolling.

To be clear, Spiderman alone is worth about half of the entirety of Star Wars. This is after Star Wars was massively pumped up by Disney too, and the VC economy went nuts. So offering a larger amount than Star Wars is not insane, just a run of the mill too-high offer.
https://www.visualcapitalist.com/successful-media-franchises/

foolm0r0n posted...

To be clear, Spiderman alone is worth about half of the entirety of Star Wars. This is after Star Wars was massively pumped up by Disney too, and the VC economy went nuts. So offering a larger amount than Star Wars is not insane, just a run of the mill too-high offer.
https://www.visualcapitalist.com/successful-media-franchises/

Sony only has Spider-Man's movie rights. Disney still has everything else, most notably merchandising.