Movies Phil Lord and Chris Miller reveal how Across the Spider-Verse is 'way, way, way bigger than the last one' The Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse sequel has six universes and counting. By Lauren Huff Lauren Huff Lauren Huff is a writer at Entertainment Weekly with over a decade of experience covering all facets of the entertainment industry. After graduating with honors from the University of Texas at Austin (Hook 'em, Horns!), Lauren wrote about film, television, awards season, music, and more for the likes of The Hollywood Reporter, Deadline Hollywood, Us Weekly, Awards Circuit, and others before landing at EW in May 2019. EW's editorial guidelines Published on April 26, 2022 12:50AM EDT When it came to making a sequel to the Oscar-winning Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, Phil Lord and Chris Miller's motto appears to be go big or go home. Everything is bigger this time around, the writer-producers revealed during Sony's presentation at CinemaCon in Las Vegas on Monday. The duo teased that the animated film, which has been dubbed Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse, is going to be "way, way, way bigger than the last one," featuring a whopping 240 characters (by comparison, its predecessor had 40), six universes (so far), and has the largest crew of any animated film ever with 1,000 people working on the film (the first previously held the record at about 800 crew members). Sony Pictures Animation Sony recently announced that Across the Spider-Verse's release would be delayed from its planned October 2022 premiere to June 2, 2023. Because of the delay, the creative duo didn't have any official finished footage to share during the panel, but they did bring along a rough cut of about 15 minutes from the film. Utilizing glimpses of the same gorgeous animation style that the first film was known for, the footage featured Miles Morales (Shameik Moore), Spider-Gwen (Hailee Steinfeld), Jessica Drew (Issa Rae) and Spider-Man 2099/Miguel O'Hara (Oscar Isaac). Lord and Miller previously told EW back in December that Across the Spider-Verse would feature different dimensions that look and feel "radically different from all the others" and "all look like they were drawn by a different artist." CinemaCon audiences got to see the first two of those worlds. First up was Gwen's universe, known as Earth 65. There we see her battle with the Vulture, and eventually she's joined by a pregnant Jessica Drew and Miguel O'Hara, who help her take the villain down. Over in Miles' world, a.k.a. Earth 1610, it's time for him to figure out where he's going to go to college, and boy do his parents have feelings about that (he wants Columbia, mom wants somewhere in Brooklyn). Of the film's plot, the duo teased that Gwen and Miles will get together and go on a crazy dimension hopping adventure ride. "Miles' story is an epic," writer-producers Phil Lord and Chris Miller told EW last year. "We wrote what we thought the story needed to be, and to our surprise we realized it was two movies instead of one." During Monday's presentation, the duo revealed that the upcoming film's sequel, which was originally dubbed Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse (Part II), will now be called Spider-Man: Beyond the Spider-Verse. That film is set for release on March 29, 2024. Want more movie news? Sign up for Entertainment Weekly's free newsletter to get the latest trailers, celebrity interviews, film reviews, and more. Related content: Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse moves to 2023 — at least in this dimension Miles Morales is back in first look at Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse (Part One) Issa Rae joins Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse sequel: 'A dream come true'