Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse Producer Clarifies ‘240 Characters’ Reports

Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse’s co-producer has clarified that, while the new film includes 240 characters, many will be “minor or background.”

Sony announced that the sequel to 2018’s animated hit, Into the Spider-Verse, would have 240 characters across six universes at CinemaCon earlier this week, but the quote was open to misinterpretation about how significant those characters would be.

Clarifying the confusion on Twitter (below), co-producer Christopher Miller said that, while 240 separate character models were created for the animated film, this number includes “mostly minor or background characters.”

“The scale is grand,” he added, “but the story is personal and centres on Miles and his family, along with Gwen and a handful of others.”

To clarify, amidst the universe-hopping there are 240 unique characters that had to be designed and modeled but they’re mostly minor or background characters. The scale is grand, but the story is personal & centers on Miles and his family, along w/ Gwen and a handful of others https://t.co/4SwspYK8s5

— Christopher Miller (@chrizmillr) April 29, 2022

The concept therefore sounds largely similar to the first film and fans shouldn’t expect it to feature hundreds of different main characters, and certainly not hundreds of different Spider-Man variants.

The announcement came alongside a delay for the film. Instead of releasing later this year on October 7, Sony has pushed Across the Spider-Verse back to June 2, 2023.

The wait between films won’t be as long next time though, as it also revealed the third film – which we now know is called Beyond the Spider-Verse, will arrive in cinemas on March 29, 2024.

We don’t know too much else about the film, though Sony has released a short clip and revealed that each different universe will have completely different art styles.

Ryan Dinsdale is an IGN freelancer who occasionally remembers to tweet @thelastdinsdale. He’ll talk about The Witcher all day.