Sony Animation Presidents Responds To ‘Beyond The Spider-Verse’ Crunch Concerns: “Nobody Has To Work On A Show They Don’t Want To Work On”
In delivering a prime example of how not to respond to widespread concerns about the well-being of one’s employees, Sony Animation bosses Kristine Belson and Damien de Froberville say that while they are well aware of the crunch time issues that have plagued the Spider-Verse film franchise, they feel a majority of the complaints ultimately fall flat to the voluntary nature of their animators’ employment.
As first reported by Vulture shortly after the June 2023 premiere of Across the Spider-Verse, the film’s various art teams were subjected to such abysmally poor working conditions that over 100 artists, from animators to modelers, had elected to exit production well before Miles Morales’ multiverse adventure had officially been completed.
“With [co-director] Phil Lord, nothing is ever final or approved,” said one former crew member who spoke to the outlet. “Nothing was really set in stone. Nothing was ever done. Everything was just endlessly moving beneath our feet because they wanted it to be the best that it could be.”
“Over 100 people left the project because they couldn’t take it anymore/ But a lot stayed on just so they could make sure their work survived until the end — because if it gets changed, it’s no longer yours. I know people who were on the project for over a year who left, and now they have little to show for it because everything was changed. They went through the hell of the production and then got none of their work coming out the other side.”
Said another insider, ” I’ve worked on projects where things are rewritten — even late in production. But this is another level of craziness.”
“The hardest thing on the animators has not been working 11 hours a day, 70 hours a week. It’s been the wasted work and the frustration of putting in that many hours just to see it changed or thrown away.”
And while the web-slinging trilogy’s delayed-to-hell-and-back conclusion, Beyond the Spider-Verse, has yet to receive any major accusations of worker mistreatment, the film’s constant reception of one release date delay after another has many fans and industry professionals fearing the worst.
Seeking to assuage these concerns, The Hollywood Reporter‘s Aaron Couch took the opportunity during a recent interview with Belson and de Froberviblle to press the pair, “[directors Phil Lord and Chris Miller] drove some animators crazy on the last Spider-Verse because they write the movie until the end of production. Is that straining for people this time around?”
Taking the lead, Belson in turn declared, “Nobody has to work on a show they don’t want to work on.”
“Even though you’ll hear — whether it’s Spider-Verse or other shows — that people go through these really difficult crunch times, everybody wants to be on the most ambitious and most exciting shows.”
Adding to his partner’s thoughts, de Froberville then spoke to how “We made some changes to the pipeline to, not avoid — because Chris and Phil are always going to iterate late — but to lessen the amount of iteration on the back end.”
“We brought on a live-action DP, Alice Brooks. She’s been directing camera in a way that we hadn’t done on Spider-Verse before. We’re in animation on Spider-Verse now. Because the directors and Chris and Phil have a chance to iterate so much early on while we’re in story, and truly visualize what it’s going look like by the time those sequences flow into the Imageworks pipeline, there’s way less changes.”
All in all, details as to the exact nature of Beyond the Spider-Verse‘s working conditions, whether good or bad, will likely stay under wraps until sometime after the film hits theaters on – at least for now – June 18th, 2027.
