Miles Morales is coming back to awkwardly place his hand on your shoulder and say, “Hey.”
On Friday, Marvel confirmed the critically-acclaimed and Oscar-winning film, Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse is returning for a sequel. The production company also announced a release date: April 8, 2022.
The first Spider-Verse film, which was black as hell and featured the voices of Shameik Moore, Mahershala Ali and Brian Tyree Henry, was the sole product of Sony Pictures. After a bit of soap-operatic back-and-forth, Sony and Disney recently came to an agreement so that Spider-Man could appear in the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU). As CNBC reported, the two studios decided to part ways in August after not being able to reach an agreement (also known as wealthy people woes) but were finally able to join together in September, announcing a third film in the Spider-Man: Homecoming series.
Co-director Peter Ramsey made history when he was nominated for the Best Animated Feature at the Academy Awards, becoming the first African-American to ever be nominated in that category. Of course, he topped that by winning the trophy.
“When I first heard about an animated Spider-Man feature, my question was, “Why another Spider-Man movie?,” he told the Hollywood Reporter in December 2018, for the magazine’s roundtable series.
“I think the first thing that really made me go “Oh” was the fact that [screenwriter] Phil Lord and [producer] Chris Miller were involved. Then I heard that it was going to be about the Miles Morales version of the character rather than the Peter Parker version, and that really exploded my enthusiasm for the idea because that’s a story that hasn’t been told before. Miles is half African-American and half Latino—right there it’s an innovation in the type of person who typically gets to be featured in these kinds of movies. At the same time, it’s what so much of our country looks like and is.”