Four minutes of Spider-Man: Beyond the Spider-Verse are loose on the internet, and Sony can’t put them back.
The footage hit social media today. Sony is currently trying to scrub it from X / Twitter and elsewhere, but that’s a losing fight when users keep reposting the same clip across multiple channels faster than takedowns can land.
What’s in it: what looks like the opening of the animated movie, plus a trailer montage that points to the current June 18, 2027 release date. The working theory is that this is the same material Sony screened behind closed doors at CinemaCon earlier this year.
Sony has been here before
This isn’t a one-off. Sony and Marvel have both been bleeding video in recent years, from Tom Holland's Spider-Man films to Avengers: Doomsday content turning up all over the internet.
Which makes the timing sting a little more than usual. Beyond the Spider-Verse is the closing chapter of Sony Pictures Animation’s Oscar-winning Spider-Verse saga, following 2018’s Into the Spider-Verse and 2023’s Across the Spider-Verse. Bob Persichetti and Justin K. Thompson are directing, with a story by Phil Lord, Christopher Miller and David Callaham.
Do the math on that release date and it lands four years after Across the Spider-Verse and eight years after Into the Spider-Verse.
Why it took this long
Lord and Miller explained the delay back in February, and the answer wasn’t sabotage or studio chaos. It was them.
They said a lot of it came down to the pressure they put on themselves to top the first two movies, both critical and commercial hits, and the sheer volume of work that kind of swing demands. Then came the fallout from splitting the sequel in two and having to reassemble it into a coherent trilogy and coherent standalone films.
“At one point it was one movie, but there was too much movie there, so it was separated into two,” Miller said. “But then once you looked at that second half of a movie, you’re like, ‘Well, that’s like not just a story arc that has a beginning, middle, and end.”
“We know where it’s headed, but we need to understand better what’s happening in the middle,” Lord added. “And we came upon a really wonderful notion, which is when your family is broken apart by your calling, your talents, how do you put them back together? How do you have it all?”
Miller kept going. “We put the most pressure on ourselves,” he said. “There’s no one that puts more pressure on us than ourselves, wanting to outdo ourselves each time and see things that you haven’t seen before and make it feel like something you’ve never experienced before. And so, trying to get something that is as worthy as the previous two has been the driver.”
“Having to take it apart to put it back together again was really, really [the] real thing that made it take longer,” Miller said.
The pitch: the most emotional one
In March, Lord and Miller insisted the movie was on track. “It’s on schedule and it’s going to be beautiful and emotional,” Lord said. “I would say the most emotional of the three,” Miller added.
Miller also got into how they’re animating Spot differently this time.
Warning! Spoilers for the Spider-Verse movies follow:
Dr. Johnathon Ohnn, aka the Spot, is the main antagonist of the Spider-Verse movies. The former Alchemax scientist became a portal-creating supervillain when Miles Morales destroyed Kingpin’s Super-Collider, and he’s really, really angry at Miles for ruining his life. By the end of Across the Spider-Verse, having grown enormously powerful, he sets out to murder Miles’ father, Jefferson Davis.
He also steals essentially every scene he’s in. That portal power is the engine behind the trilogy’s most elaborate action sequences, and the animation team apparently isn’t done with it.
“… there are some new things they’re developing for the look… of what Spot does specifically that are extra amazing,” Miller said.
“They’re really extraordinary. They’re going to be great,” Lord said, adding: “… artistically… It’s going to take you to places of abstraction that I think are going to be really special.”
Who’s coming back
Daniel Kaluuya returns as Hobart “Hobie” Brown / Spider-Punk after playing him in Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse. He’s also set to reprise the role in a Spider-Punk animated spinoff.
Marvin Jones III, the voice of Tombstone in Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, is set to reprise his role as well.
Two and a half years from release, and the first thing most people will have seen of this movie is a compressed repost with someone’s screen-record artifacting all over Spot’s portals.
