Sony hired over 1,000 animators to make the second Spider-Verse movie. More than 100 of them quit during production, burned out by schedules that ran seven days a week. The film made $328 million in profit. More than Oppenheimer.
Sony bought the rights to make Spider-Man movies in 1999 for $7 million. Every Spider-Man film since has made over $11 billion at the box office combined.
The animated Spider-Verse films are the most profitable of all of them, dollar for dollar. First film: $90 million to make, $384 million back. The sequel cost $100 million and brought in $690 million, and Deadline calculated its profit at $328 million. Christopher Nolan's three-hour atomic bomb film made $201 million by the same math, $127 million less.
There's a simple reason why: Sony keeps all the money from the animated films. When Tom Holland makes a live-action Spider-Man, Disney puts up 25% of the budget and takes 25% of what it earns. The animated films have no such deal.
A 2023 Vulture report found animators pulled 11-hour shifts for close to a year on Across the Spider-Verse. Phil Lord, one of the producers, reportedly insisted on personally approving every shot, overruling the film's three directors and sending scenes back for up to five rounds of changes.
Beyond the Spider-Verse was supposed to come out in March 2024 and is now arriving June 18, 2027. The release date changed four separate times. At a movie industry event last year, the directors said they refused to "run it back" and needed the time. An animator told Vulture back in 2023 that the third film hadn't even started while the second was still being finished.
When this movie opens, the trilogy will have taken eight and a half years. The first film came out in December 2018. The original Star Wars trilogy took six. Sony scheduled Brand New Day (Holland's live-action Spider-Man) for July 2026 and pushed the animated film to 2027 so the two wouldn't steal each other's audience. They've also approved a Spider-Women spin-off and a Spider-Punk film that Daniel Kaluuya is co-writing.
Two animated films cost $190 million to make and earned $1.08 billion back. Sony gave this team four years because every number on the spreadsheet said to.
ai in art is the absolute worst application. i’d rather see a child’s doodles than ai. you can use it as a tool for eliminating rote tasks, but it should have no influence in the creative decision making process. my humble luddite two cents.
another concept artist here wanting to say that any designer worth their salt would agree when i say that 50% of creating GREAT designs is the quality of reference gathered and the personal visual library of the artist actually doing the work
using ai generated images in your reference boards to "get an idea" actively hamstrings your ability to explore and iterate actual new, interesting designs because it creates a preconceived end goal in your head and allows no room for deviation and happy accidents to happen
the greatest concept artists ive ever met are people who expose themselves to new things and are truly curious about the world. they spend DAYS collecting high quality, accurate reference and have images of everything you could ever think of under the sun in their personal libraries- fabrics and stitching from so many different cultures, cool rocks, weird plants, interesting architecture, landscapes, art from every time period etc.
do not fall for the "generate ideas" excuse, you are hired as a concept artist first for your great ideas and design sense, not because you can paint the prettiest picture. the last thing many of us want- gamers and artists alike- is for the medium we all love so much to become only derivative slop with the same repackaged visuals and experiences.
Keep at it!
-Uninstall/turn off AI features.
-Respond to surveys and say no to AI.
-Downvote and speak your mind in reviews.
-Buy hardware from before AI integrations.
-Reply to corpos and big accts and let them know we don't want it.
-GenAI needs to go and pressure is the key.