Ever since a sequel Spider-Verse, was announced, there’s speculation that the film would cross over into live-action. Unfortunately, when Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse was released, that speculation was proven wrong, but it turns out there’s a good reason one of the best movies of the year avoided live-action for the most part.
“There were times when we had huge live-action sequences in the film, and it just turned into a bad joke,” co-director Joe Kemp told Variety. “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.'”
Kemp and his fellow directors Joaquim Dos Santos and Justin K. Thompson admitted to getting as far as storyboarding the sequence, apparently using cutouts of the live-action characters that looked like South Park characters. Unfortunately, none of the directors revealed what happened in these live-action sequences, nor did they say if they crossed over with any other Spider-Man movies.
Still judging by the limited live-action stuff we got in Across the Spider-Verse — including Spot’s run-in with Mrs. Chen in Venom’s dimension and brief cameos from former Spider-Man actors Tobery Maguire and Andrew Garfield — we can guess that, yes, these scenes likely involved Miles traveling to the home dimensions of other Sony-owned Spider-Man characters, and maybe even the MCU.
We did actually get what could have been an MCU crossover when we saw the Donald Glover version of The Prowler in the Spider-Socety’s cells, but that could have just been another Prowler variant from a dimension very similar to the MCU, which isn’t the MCU… and oh no I’ve gone cross-eyed.
Glover’s cameo was reportedly only included very late in the filmmaking process. “It was shot at a studio in New York,” Powers told Variety. “Chris Miller flew to be there in person, and Phil Lord and I were on the video feed giving directions. We got it in at the 11th hour. As a matter of fact, even in audience preview screenings, it was a little cardboard cutout of Donald Glover.”
Sounds delightful to us. Also, they should definitely include a South Park Spider-Man in Spider-Verse 3. Speaking of which, we’ve got you covered if you want to know more about the Spider-Verse 3 release date. You should also check out our Across the Spider-Verse review.
We’ve also got a load of Spidey content, including a full breakdown of the Spider-Verse 2 cast, an Earth-42 explainer, and we’ve answered if Miguel O’Hara is really a vampire. Finally, you can learn everything you need to know about the Spider-Ma: Freshman Year release date and the Spider-Man 4 release date here.