Welcome back to the Spider-Verse: Inside summer's most anticipated superhero movie

Shameik Moore had a suspicion that Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse might be big. But even though he voiced teenage hero Miles Morales — a.k.a. the titular Spider-Man — the actor didn't realize quite how big the film would get.

When Sony first announced plans for yet another Spider-Man movie, the news was mostly met with an ambivalent shrug. After years of Tobeys, Andrews, and Toms, even the most hardcore Marvel nerds weren't exactly clamoring for another Spidey origin story. Moore knew that the animated Spider-Verse was taking an ambitious approach, using groundbreaking technology to bring Marvel's first Afro Latino wall-crawler to the screen. But it didn't properly hit him until the actor saw the finished film, slipping into an early screening on the Sony lot with costar Jake Johnson (who voices Miles' reluctant mentor, Peter B. Parker).

"Jake and I saw it together, and we were like, 'Wait, wait, wait,'" Moore recalls now. "'This is something special.'"

When Into the Spider-Verse swung into theaters in December 2018, it became an almost-instant classic, raking in box office receipts and spawning an endless scroll of fan art. Not only did the film deliver eye-popping visuals, but it helped reinvigorate the superhero genre, breathing new life into a hero who had been adapted countless times before. A few months later, Moore was at the Oscars, celebrating Spider-Verse's win for Best Animated Feature. "I will never forget walking around the Vanity Fair party that year with Shameik," adds Hailee Steinfeld, who voices Miles' alternate dimension web-slinging friend Gwen Stacy. "We were like, 'How do we get our hands on the Oscar?' We slipped a selfie."

Now, Spider-Verse is getting a sequel — and this time, expectations are higher than the New York skyscrapers that Miles swings from. Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse (in theaters June 2) once again centers on Miles, Gwen, and a cadre of interdimensional Spider-People, following them as they journey through the multiverse to tackle a new threat. Producers Phil Lord and Chris Miller are back, joined by new directors Kemp Powers, Joaquim Dos Santos, and Justin K. Thompson. It's been a years-long journey for each of them, and Dos Santos remembers sketching out early sequel ideas when the first film was in the midst of earning its $384 million global haul.

"We were still at the granular level of coming up with what the [sequel] could be, and the first film started landing in a big way," he says. "It was winning all these awards, and it was like, Uh-oh. These shoes just got much bigger to fill."

Still, the filmmakers say they're more than ready for the challenge. If the first film was a surprise for audiences, they hope Across the Spider-Verse is an even bigger one. After all, with great power comes great… Oh, you know.

"The first time, there was a lot of nervousness, like, is this going too far? Is this going to be confusing to audiences because it doesn't look like anything else?" Miller recalls. "Turns out, that was one of the things they loved about it. So this time, we can lean into it and say, 'Alright, let's push it even further.'"

Across the Spider-Verse picks up about a year and a half after the first film, and by now, a slightly older Miles has settled into his web-slinging ways. He's practically perfected his Spidey skills and finds himself juggling crime fighting with the perils of young adulthood.

"He just successfully saved his universe, so he's looking for another challenge, a super challenge that he can take on," Moore teases. "He's almost getting bored with the robbers and the petty thefts."

Plus, Miles isn't the only one grappling with growing pains. His parents — cop Jefferson (Brian Tyree Henry) and nurse Rio (Luna Lauren Vélez) — are struggling with Miles' newfound independence. Dos Santos and Thompson are both fathers themselves, and they were particularly intrigued by how a Spider-Man story might intersect with a parent-child narrative. "The family dynamic between Miles and his parents was so dramatically different than any Peter Parker before him," adds Powers, who's known for writing One Night in Miami and co-directing Pixar's Soul.

Halfway across the multiverse, Gwen is dealing with family drama of her own. Her father is also a police officer (voiced by Shea Whigham), and he's hellbent on tracking down her secret identity. "She's dealing with a lot of conflict this time around," Steinfeld says. "But her ultimate goal in life and priority is to help people."

When the film begins, both Gwen and Miles are working alone, but they find themselves missing the camaraderie of other Spider-People. (Besides, swinging through the city is way more fun when you've got someone to share it with.) Specifically, the two teens are missing each other, and when they finally reunite, their budding flirtation from the first film starts to spark again.

"Miles is in a place where he just wants to impress her," Moore says. "He will jump through a portal across dimensions to be with her. And quite frankly, I don't know if I know anybody I'm willing to jump through a portal for."

"I'll tell you something: I don't!" Steinfeld adds with a laugh.

Steinfeld, 26, and Moore, 28, performed most of their lines alone, but in person, they have an easy, playful chemistry. The directors say some of their favorite days were when Moore and Steinfeld recorded in the booth together. The two young actors hadn't seen each other in well over a year when they reunited for their first day on Across the Spider-Verse, recording a scene where Gwen and Miles have a similar reunion across dimensions.

"We tried to get them on the microphone as quickly as possible because that was the energy we wanted in the scene where they see each other again for the first time," Lord explains with a laugh. "I was like, 'Get on the mic! Save this for the scene!'"

If the first film followed a group of Spider-People as they crashed into Miles' universe, the sequel lives up to its title and sends Miles zipping through different dimensions. The movie ping-pongs across multiple worlds, each with its own unique art style. The filmmakers wanted the audience to be able to immediately identify each universe based solely on how it was rendered — whether it's the punky graffiti of New London (home to Daniel Kaluuya's Spider-Punk) or the sleek Nueva York (home to Oscar Isaac's Miguel O'Hara, a.k.a. Spider-Man 2099).

"We're essentially making five or six films in one," explains Dos Santos, known for his work on Avatar: The Last Airbender and The Legend of Korra. "These aren't just little pools that we're dipping a toe into. These are fully realized, robust worlds that could frankly hold their own film."

One of the most dazzling dimensions is Gwen's home world. Where Miles' universe looks like it was ripped from the pages of a comic book, Gwen's looks like an impressionist painting come to life. The filmmakers describe it as almost like a mood ring, where colors and images shift around Gwen, depending on her emotions. "It's very subjective," Miller explains. "We had to develop a way for the world to be always changing and painted at every moment. It was very, very hard. Each shot had to be lovingly handcrafted."

Dos Santos remembers walking into an early footage screening and seeing what he assumed was a gorgeous piece of concept art — the kind of elaborate, hand-drawn sketch that never actually makes it to the screen. "Then they hit play, and it started moving," he says with awe. "We literally thought it was a still image that had been meticulously painted, and all of a sudden, the whole thing was moving."

Another key universe is the colorful Mumbattan, home to comics favorite Pavitr Prabhakar, a.k.a. Spider-Man India. "[Mumbattan is] based on these old Indian comics from the '70s and '80s that have a specific design style," Miller says. "The Benday printing process [using dots to create shading] is very visible. Figuring out how to do that required a whole bunch of new tools. Each world required a massive team of people who had to figure out: How can we do this fully 3-D world and make it look like a 2-D illustration?"

Creating each universe wasn't as simple as reskinning a cityscape in different color palettes. Each world had to be built from the ground up, using cutting-edge technology to blend hand-drawn art and 3-D modeling.

"On the first movie, we'd been trying to teach the computer how to draw," Lord explains. "On this movie, we had to teach it how to paint."

"It's fun until you have 500 shots in a style no one has ever done before," Miller adds with a sigh. "Then it's a ton of work."

Those universes, of course, are all populated by their own Spider-People. Miles and Gwen cross paths with all sorts of web-slingers, inspired by pretty much every piece of Spider-Man media ever made. Early trailers have teased countless cameos and Easter eggs — including comic favorites like the Scarlet Spider and deep cuts like the Bombastic Bag-Man. There's even a Spider-Horse, who is — you guessed it — a horse. Insecure's Issa Rae voices Jessica Drew, a.k.a. Spider-Woman, a motorcycle-riding badass who helps mentor Gwen. Daniel Kaluuya also joins the cast as Hobie Brown, a mohawk-clad, guitar-carrying freedom fighter who goes by Spider-Punk.

But one of the most notable new Spideys is Miguel O'Hara, a.k.a. Spider-Man 2099. Oscar Isaac's futuristic genius popped up in the post-credits scene of the first film, but here, he steps into the spotlight, organizing an elite interdimensional group called the Spider Society. A brilliant scientist and devoted leader, Miguel is willing to do whatever it takes to protect the multiverse — even if his methods put him at odds with Miles. Miguel isn't the villain of the film — that's the Spot, voiced by Jason Schwartzman — but Powers says Miguel is Miles' "primary antagonist."

"Let's be honest: Oscar has an incredible amount of gravitas," the director adds. "When he wants to feel threatening, he can really, really feel threatening."

Lord and Miller are hesitant to name an exact number, but they estimate that the movie features about 240 unique characters — 200 more than the previous one. The entire film is a massive undertaking made by thousands of crew members, and when EW spoke to the filmmakers in late April, they were down to the final crunch, mixing sound, making final tweaks, and tying up any loose ends. (Loose webs?) Pandemic-related delays pushed the film back from its original 2022 release date, but the directors and cast promise that the final product will be worth the wait.

Just like with Into the Spider-Verse, Miller says the sequel is reinventing how animated movies can be made. "Hopefully, it will make people aware that we're just scratching the surface of what's possible," he adds. "Anything that you can imagine, you can see cinematically."

Powers is quick to note that all the spectacle and universe-hopping cameos won't mean anything if the story doesn't work in its simplest form. It's a lesson that carries over from the success of the first film, which, stripped down, worked as a heartbreaking and honest coming-of-age story. In the case of Across the Spider-Verse, it comes back to Miles and Gwen. "They're our North star," Powers explains. He and his fellow directors hope that when the film hits theaters this summer, it won't just dazzle fans' eyes but also fill their hearts.

"Don't forget: No one saw the first Spider-Verse coming," Powers says. "I remember the chatter I heard, like, 'Why do we need another Spider-Man movie?' And then it came out. So, you've got to be really careful about trying to meet people's expectations. A lot of times, I think people don't even know what they want or what they need until it's laid out in front of them."

And with any luck, audiences will be willing to follow Miles and Gwen into any universe.

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