Over the weekend, director, writer, and producerPhil Lordgave fans some insight into the scripting process onSpider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse. The Oscar-winning animated feature grew to be a hit upon release back in December 2018, withShameik Moore,Jake Johnson, andHailee Steinfeldlending their voices to some of the most iconicSpider-Mancharacters in a story set in an alternate Spider-man reality.
It all began when Twitter accountPlot Devicesshared a graphic on how the plotting of Lord and co-director/writerChris Miller’s 2014 animated featureThe Lego Movieshakes out. The graphic is a solid visual guide for those folks looking to wrap their heads about planning out major story beats. But, it admittedly might oversimplify the process by removing all of the edits, cuts, additions, and other “joys” of writing a screenplay that come with the title of “screenwriter”.
In response to Plot Device’sLego Moviegraphic, Lord graciously retweeted, “This makes it seem like we had a plan,” before going on to share some photos of the plotting process forInto the Spider-VerseLord and his co-writerRodney Rothmanwent through. Each photo shows a whiteboard, with each whiteboard showing different versions of theSpider-Versescript as it evolved. In two photos, Lord managed to highlight the highs and lows (and woes) of trying to crack a movie and not just make it work, but make it work really well.
He captioned the pictures with: “So here is the “storywheel” of@SpiderVerse. We did a big shakeup of the story less than a year from release and we had to figure out how to reshape sequences we had already boarded and animated and fold them in with new stuff. Oh, and we re-broke the whole third act.”
Not gonna lie: It’s always fun when creatives give surprise peeks at their process like this, regardless of when the information comes out. Lord (notthatLord, the other one), if you’re reading this and happen to have any other photos of your creative process behind, say,Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs, that’d be pretty A-OK with me.
Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verseis currently streaming on Netflix. For more, check out the otheranimated movies streaming on Netflixwe recommend you watch.
