Kemp Powers, co-director of the highly anticipated Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse, has been busy with the film’s success. The movie earned $120.7 million on its opening weekend and received rave reviews from both critics and audiences. Powers recently returned to Los Angeles after helping his son move out of his college dorm, where he spoke to The Hollywood Reporter about the film’s success and the work that went into making it.
Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse has been in the works for years, with the team working on it up to the last minute to perfect it. One of the best-kept secrets of all came late in the game for the Spider-Verse team—a major cameo from Donald Glover, who briefly appeared as an alternate version of the Prowler locked up in Miguel O’Hara’s Spider headquarters in Nueva York.
Powers is known for the critical success of his debut 2013 stage play One Night in Miami and has worked his way across every medium, from theater to live-action moviemaking to animation. He previously co-directed and co-wrote the Oscar-winning Pixar animation feature Soul. Powers spent much of his time on the film directing actors in the recording studio, where some actors recorded together and were able to play off of one another’s performances.
The cast includes voice acting veterans and established screen actors new to the world of animation. Among the dozens of cameos and meme references in the film, Powers was surprised at what struck viewers the most—the Lego Spider-Man scene, for instance, was one of the biggest laughs in the entire film.
Like the first film, Across the Spider-Verse enlisted three directors. This time, it was helmed by Powers, Joaquim Dos Santos, and Justin K. Thompson. While Powers and Dos Santos were new to the franchise, Thompson had worked on the first film as a production designer.
The directing trio will return for the third installment Spider-Man: Beyond the Spider-Verse, slated for release on March 29, 2024. While the filmmakers have previously said they’re not sure if the film will make that release date, Powers declined to speak on the final chapter in Miles Morales’ story.
As to whether or not the writer’s strike has affected the ongoing production for the third installment, Powers declines to comment once more. In the meantime, the director is proud of what they’ve accomplished with the sequel, paving the way for the third installment. Across the Spider-Verse leaves off on a shocking cliffhanger, as Miles faces off against what is likely to be his greatest challenge yet. In the final minutes of the film, Miles discovers that his very existence within the Spider-Verse is a mistake—the radioactive spider that bit him was meant to go to someone else in an alternate dimension. In the final minutes of the film, Miles returns home, or so he thinks, to save his father from a tragic fate. Turns out, he’s not home at all. He’s on Earth-42, the origin place of his radioactive spider, where things have gone awry without Spider-Man. Miles’ father Jefferson is dead instead of Uncle Aaron. Left without a radioactive spider, this alternate version of Miles, known as Miles…
