Four minutes of Spider-Man: Beyond the Spider-Verse have escaped onto the internet, and there is no way for Sony to pull them back.
The footage surfaced on social media today. Sony is actively trying to wipe it from X / Twitter and other platforms, but that is an unwinnable fight when users keep re-uploading the same clip across channel after channel faster than takedowns can land.
What it contains: what appears to be the opening of the animated film, plus a trailer montage that points to the current June 18, 2027 release date. The prevailing theory is that this is the same material Sony screened behind closed doors at CinemaCon earlier this year.
Sony has been here before
This is hardly an isolated incident. Video has been leaking out of both Sony and Marvel for years now, from Tom Holland's Spider-Man films to Avengers: Doomsday content popping up all over the internet.
That track record makes the timing sting a little more than usual. Beyond the Spider-Verse closes out Sony Pictures Animation's Oscar-winning Spider-Verse saga, arriving after 2018's Into the Spider-Verse and 2023's Across the Spider-Verse. Bob Persichetti and Justin K. Thompson are directing, from a story by Phil Lord, Christopher Miller and David Callaham.
Run the numbers on that release date and it arrives four years after Across the Spider-Verse and eight years after Into the Spider-Verse.
Why the wait was so long
Lord and Miller spelled out the reason for the delay back in February, and it wasn't sabotage or studio chaos. It was them.
Much of it, they said, came down to the pressure they piled on themselves to outdo the first two movies — both critical and commercial hits — and the sheer amount of work that kind of swing requires. Then there was the fallout from splitting the sequel into two parts and having to reassemble it into a coherent trilogy and coherent standalone films.
"At one point it was one movie, but there was too much movie there, so it was separated into two," Miller said. "But then once you looked at that second half of a movie, you're like, 'Well, that's like not just a story arc that has a beginning, middle, and end."
"We know where it's headed, but we need to understand better what's happening in the middle," Lord added. "And we came upon a really wonderful notion, which is when your family is broken apart by your calling, your talents, how do you put them back together? How do you have it all?"
Miller kept going. "We put the most pressure on ourselves," he said. "There's no one that puts more pressure on us than ourselves, wanting to outdo ourselves each time and see things that you haven't seen before and make it feel like something you've never experienced before. And so, trying to get something that is as worthy as the previous two has been the driver."
"Having to take it apart to put it back together again was really, really [the] real thing that made it take longer," Miller said.
The promise: the most emotional entry yet
By March, the pair were insisting the film was on track. "It's on schedule and it's going to be beautiful and emotional," Lord said. "I would say the most emotional of the three," Miller added.
Miller also touched on how the team is animating Spot differently this time around.
Warning! Spoilers for the Spider-Verse movies follow:
Dr. Johnathon Ohnn, better known as the Spot, serves as the main antagonist of the Spider-Verse movies. The ex-Alchemax scientist was transformed into a portal-creating supervillain when Miles Morales destroyed Kingpin's Super-Collider, and he holds a deep grudge against Miles for wrecking his life. By the close of Across the Spider-Verse, having become enormously powerful, he sets his sights on killing Miles' father, Jefferson Davis.
He also walks away with essentially every scene he appears in. His portal ability powers the trilogy's most elaborate action set pieces, and the animation team apparently has more planned for it.
"… there are some new things they're developing for the look… of what Spot does specifically that are extra amazing," Miller said.
"They're really extraordinary. They're going to be great," Lord said, adding: "… artistically… It's going to take you to places of abstraction that I think are going to be really special."
Returning voices
Daniel Kaluuya is back as Hobart "Hobie" Brown / Spider-Punk, a role he first played in Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse. He is also lined up to reprise the character in an animated Spider-Punk spinoff.
Marvin Jones III, who voiced Tombstone in Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, is set to return as well.
Two and a half years out from release, and for most people the first glimpse of this movie will be a compressed repost with someone's screen-record artifacting smeared across Spot's portals.