When Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse came out in December 2018, Sony Pictures Animation wasn’t sure what to expect. The film told the story of Miles Morales’s beginnings using a unique animation style inspired by comic books – something no major studio had tried before for a full-length movie. It opened with $35.4 million in domestic box office and, thanks to positive reviews, eventually earned $384 million worldwide on a $90 million budget. Critics loved Into the Spider-Verse, and it won major awards, including top honors from the Annie Awards, Golden Globes, BAFTA, and Producers Guild Awards, ultimately winning the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature. Because the film was so well-received, Sony quickly started planning a three-movie series following Miles Morales (voiced by Shameik Moore) and his adventures across different dimensions.
Today marks the three-year anniversary of the release of Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse, the second film in the trilogy. It opened to $120 million domestically, significantly more than the original, and received excellent reviews, earning an “A” CinemaScore and a 95% rating on Rotten Tomatoes. Within two weeks, it outperformed the entire box office run of the first movie, becoming Sony’s most successful animated film ever. The sequel featured even more impressive animation, a wider exploration of the multiverse, and a more complex emotional core. However, the film ended on a frustrating cliffhanger, and fans have been eagerly awaiting the promised conclusion for over three years, which was initially planned for release the following spring.
Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse‘s Cliffhanger Was Supposed to Be Resolved Earlier
The ending of Across the Spider-Verse leaves Miles Morales stranded in the wrong dimension. After escaping Spider Society and setting the interdimensional transporter for his home universe (Earth-1610), Miles is accidentally sent to Earth-42. This happens because the spider that gave him his powers originally came from Earth-42, and the transporter reads that spider’s signature. When Miles arrives, hoping he’s home, he’s immediately captured by a version of himself who became the Prowler in that reality. The movie ends on this surprising cliffhanger, leaving the conflict with Spider Society unresolved and Miles unable to stop The Spot (voiced by Jason Schwartzman).
It’s not unusual for movies to end on a cliffhanger instead of fully resolving the story. For example, Avengers: Infinity War showed Thanos winning, with the heroes fixing things in the next film, Avengers: Endgame. Similarly, The Empire Strikes Back famously left Han Solo frozen, and Back to the Future Part II ended with Doc Brown stuck in the past – but all of these movies still offered some kind of resolution to the main conflict before ending. Across the Spider-Verse is different; it doesn’t provide any resolution at all.
When the movie first came out, most viewers didn’t mind the cliffhanger ending because the next film, Spider-Man: Beyond the Spider-Verse, was scheduled to be released in theaters just nine months later. However, a report in Vulture soon revealed that the animation team had been working under extremely difficult conditions. Animators were reportedly putting in eleven-hour days, seven days a week, to keep up with constant changes requested by producer Phil Lord, which led to around 100 artists leaving the project due to burnout. These problems, along with the actors’ and writers’ strikes that stopped voice work, ultimately forced Sony to postpone the final movie’s release.
The release of the film faced repeated delays. Initially, Sony suggested a 2025 release, but later confirmed it wouldn’t arrive until after that year. While 2026 was considered, it conflicted with the release of Tom Holland’s Spider-Man: Brand New Day. This left 2027 as the most likely option, and Sony officially announced a June 4th, 2027 date at CinemaCon in 2025. The date was then moved to June 25th, and later to its current confirmed date of June 18, 2027. What was initially expected to be a nine-month wait has become one of the longest delays ever between a dramatic cliffhanger and the resolution of that story.
Spider-Man: Beyond the Spider-Verse opens in theaters on June 18, 2027.
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2026-06-02 23:11