Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse sequel was in the works a year before release

Screenwriter Dave Callaham recently revealed that he had already started writing the script for Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse 2 a year before Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse was released.

In a recent interview with The Hollywood Reporter, Callaham revealed that Phil Lord and Chris Miller tapped him to write the sequel before Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse came out, and he recounted those early talks, when he sat down with the duo and ran through some of the concepts for the first film.

“[Lord and Miller] were still working on the first movie,” Callaham recalls. “They showed me the dailies, which were just sketches with some temporary voiceovers and no action design. I could feel the passion behind the project, but I couldn’t imagine what it would look like in the end.”

Callaham said he also looked at some of the artwork they had produced, and then he began the "very strange process of starting work on the second film a year before the first film came out," but no one could have predicted the success of the first film.

Adds Callaham: “Only after the first movie came out did people outside understand what I was doing. And then the interest went from zero to 100. People suddenly loved the movie, and two months later it won an Oscar, and the trajectory started to change.”

He admitted that Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse 2 has been in the works for so long and the sequel's script has changed so much that he's still working on it, and that Lord and Miller are already involved. He predicts that the two will continue to work on it until the film is released on October 7, 2022.

Callaham said: "I am now writing with them. Sometimes we write alone, sometimes we write together, sometimes we write together as a team, depending on the schedule. I like this state very much. When I start writing the second part, they are still busy with the first part. But I can't imitate their writing style."

"Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse" was released in 2018, grossing $373 million worldwide and winning Sony Pictures Animation its first Oscar for Best Animated Feature.