In Sony's Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, Shameik Moore and Jake Johnson join the proud lineage of cinematic Spider-Men, as Miles Morales and Peter Parker respectively. Only instead of donning the suits onscreen, the two actors got to provide their voices to their animated counterparts in the film. They did a lot of voicework too, recording every scene a surprising number of times, as Jake Johnson explained:
We've been recording this for the last 2 ½ years, so we have recorded every scene in this movie more than 30, 40 times.
Speaking with CinemaBlend's own Eric Eisenberg, Jake Johnson makes it clear just how much time these two Spider-Men put in to get this film right. That is a long time to spend on a movie and an awful lot of doing the same scene over and over again. You'd almost think that Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse was a David Fincher or Stanley Kubrick film, demanding directors who both famously forced actors to do take after take after take.
Although they did every scene a bunch of times, that doesn't mean that every take was the same or they had to say the same thing over and over. Jake Johnson and Shameik Moore had the opportunity to play off each other and improvise in the recording booth, and they were constantly getting new lines to try out, as Jake Johnson elaborated:
I remember Chris Miller texted a bunch of stuff to Rodney Rothman one day and I was doing the lines off the phone from new texts. We were improvising, we were talking things out. So everything was explored.
Although Chris Miler didn't work on the script for Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse with partner Phil Lord, he clearly played an active role as producer, texting over lines to one of the film's co-directors, Rodney Rothman. It's kind of funny to think how ideas were so free flowing and coming fast and furious that Jake Johnson was just reading lines off a phone, not some typed up pages.
The real essence of what comes across in this bit of Eric's interview with the film's two stars is that the script wasn't set in stone and the actors didn't have to follow it to the letter. There was an environment of improvisation and collaboration where everyone worked together and played off each other to work through every possible idea to deliver the best kind of film.
You can check out the rest of what Jake Johnson said to Eric about the recording process in the video below:
It may have been a lot of work, but it is clear that the results of the 2-½ year recording process speak for themselves. Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse has received widespread acclaim, amounting to a phenomenal Rotten Tomatoes score. And the film is already getting a sequel and a spinoff. So Jake Johnson and Shameik Moore can look forward to plenty of more time spent in those recording booths.
Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse swings into theaters on December 14. For everything coming to theaters next year, including the live-action version of the web-slinger, check out our 2019 release schedule.
