Spider-Man has been the one Marvel character who has been nearly ubiquitous on the big screen for nearly a quarter century. From Tobey Maguire to Andrew Garfield to Tom Holland, and sometimes all three at once, he’s been everywhere. But we’re now in a strange lull period where we have no idea when we’ll see the next Spider-Man movie. This is especially strange considering we have an unfinished trilogy waiting for its final installment.
Sony’s two animated Spider-Man movies are seen as two of the best Spider-Man movies, perhaps the best superhero movies, ever made. Both Into the Spider-Verse and Across the Spider-Verse were massive hits. And yet, the future of the third installment, Beyond the Spider-Verse, is unknown. It’s apparently still in active production as, Karan Soni, the voice of “Indian Spider-Man” Pavitr Prabhakar, still has voice acting to record. He recently told ETimes…
I'm continuing on for Spider-Man. We're going to start recording for that one in a few months which I'm so excited about. That movie is deep in production. It's animation, so it's different and takes a long time. We'll see when it's ready and when it ends up coming out, but, I'm really excited. That was one of the biggest joys to get to play that character. So I'm excited to get another chance and to do it again.
Spider-Man: Beyond the Spider-Verse's release date was originally set for March 2024, less than a year after the release of Across the Spider-Verse. However, shortly after the last film became a box office smash, it became clear the final film wasn’t going to be ready in time. Rather than rush a substandard product into theaters, Beyond's release date was pulled, and the movie entered a state of “it will come out when it’s ready.”
But when will it be ready? Voice acting is usually, though not always, done before scenes are animated. So if Karan Soni is going in to record new dialogue months from now, those scenes won’t be ready for a theater for quite some time.
Animated movies have a different life cycle than live-action films. Stories can be written and rewritten numerous times. Even while animation is being done, stories can change, requiring old animation to be completely thrown out, new dialogue recorded and new shots created. This usually results in the stories being perfected, or at the very least improved, over time.
If the work that Soni will be doing later this year is one of the last pieces to fall into place, then maybe we’ll see Beyond the Spider-Verse soon. It could find its way on the 2025 release calendar, perhaps only about a year after its original release date. If the movie has made a lot of recent changes requiring a lot more new voice acting and new animation, it could still be quite some time before we return to the Spider-Verse.
