Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse is web-slinging its way up the box office charts, but according to a recent report, many of the artists who worked on the project found the production of the movie to be a toxic workplace. The article also asserts that the third movie in the trilogy, Beyond the Spider-Verse, has no chance of meeting its Spring 2024 release date. It singles out co-writer and director Phil Lord as an erratic and unrealistic head of the production.
However, the report by Vulture contains views from a Sony official as well as Amy Pascal, CEO of Pascal Pictures and a shepherd of Sony’s Spider-Man films, in addition to taking input from the artists. Both executives claim that the working conditions artists claim to have experienced on Across the Spider-Verse are typical for a film of this level.
Amy Pascal added to that sentiment, arguing that animation requires a lot of revision and re-doing in order to make a hit film a hit:
“One of the things about animation that makes it such a wonderful thing to work on is that you get to keep going until the story is right,” Pascal said. “If the story isn’t right, you have to keep going until it is.”
The fact that Pascal concluded by taking a tough position against worker concerns and said, “I guess, Welcome to making a movie,” won’t likely delight artists or fans alike.
Fans took to social media to voice their displeasure over the comment. One person said, “Incredible to have a high-ranking person like Amy Pascal spouting such utter nonsense. A cardinal rule of animation is that you fix your story problems early on in the pipeline, when it’s cheap to do so. NOT after shots are fully rendered, when it’s very expensive.”
Another twitter user wrote, “Animators: “we’re overworked and underpaid, being forced to redo shots we’ve already completed 5 times” Amy Pascal: “so? That’s filmmaking, baby! Cry harder, lmao!”
Meanwhile a fan wrote, “Remember when I said Amy Pascal should stop giving interviews? This is the worst thing you could say and you clearly don’t know how to read the room.”