Across the Spider-Verse has premiered to great critical and general audience acclaim (as well as killing it at the box office). The sequel to Into the Spider-Verse, produced by Christopher Miller and Phil Lord, took years to make and, without getting into spoilers, provides an assault to the senses, as it takes you to myriad Spider-Verses full of myriad Spider-People. It turns out that one of those scenes, and arguably the most adorable one at that, was created by a person who has yet to graduate high school.
Very mild spoilers for Across the Spider-Verse lie ahead!
Without getting into details, one 20-30 second scene in the movie gives us a glimpse of a LEGO Spider-Verse, where that Spidey is one of the best Spideys out there. There was a Twitter rumor going around that the sequence was created by a fourteen-year-old Preston Mutanga, who previously made a name for himself on the internet by re-creating the Across the Spider-Verse trailer with animated LEGOs.
Lord gave that rumor legitimacy when he retweeted a post by CultureCrave citing Mutanga as the person behind the LEGO segment in the movie.
The future of animation has arrived! https://t.co/fXXLwlFVNd
— Phil Lord (@philiplord) June 5, 2023
“The future of animation is here!” Lord wrote, and by gum, I think he’s right! Across the Spider-Verse co-director Peter Ramsay also retweeted CultureCrave’s post confirming the news, writing “A Star is Born.”
How much of what we see in Across the Spider-Verse is from Mutanga? According to Andy Leviton, who is an associate editor on all the Spider-Verse movies, Mutanga “took our cut and blasted off with it, Injecting his own creative ideas/flourishes.” Leviton goes on to call the fourteen-year-old “an absolute GOAT!” and added, “I had the pleasure of cutting in each pass he did and even the very first pass was so polished, professional, and FUNNY!”
I have a feeling we’ll be seeing more from Mutanga in the future, and not just in Beyond the Spider-Verse.
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