The home release of Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse took some fans by surprise when they found out that some scenes were different than what appeared in the theatrical version. According to producers Phil Lord and Chris Miller, that was due to extra work on the film.
Sony Pictures Imageworks’ team wanted to tweak some shots
Speaking to GamesRadar+, the producers were asked about a supposed “new cut” of Across the Spider-Verse, and why the film had featured so many changes, both in theaters and in its home release. Miller said that the reason for the various versions in the theaters was due to the fact that the international version of the film had been done months before the U.S. release, due to the film needing to be translated.
“There was an international version that was made almost two months before the movie came out because it had to be translated into different languages and these French censors have to decide what the rating of the movie is in Europe,” Miller said.
Miller went on to say that the team behind the film at Sony Pictures Imageworks had continued working on the film in the interim and ended up cleaning up some of the shots in the movie. “The team at [Sony Pictures] Imageworks still had some shots that they felt they could do better for the finished version. So, they cleaned up and tweaked those things,” said Miller.
As far as the home release, Miller said that various crew members on the team simply wanted to do “the best version” they could, and that resulted in some changes. In the end, Miller likened the various cuts of the film as a multiverse of its own, similar to the theme and plot of the film.
“Certain crew members – people in the sound department or on the animation team – were like, ‘Oh, could we do this instead,’” Miller said. “Let’s do the best possible version we can. Because it’s a multiverse movie, it’s like there’s a multiverse of the movie – that was really the reasoning behind it. It was trying to make the best possible version that everyone was going to be the proudest of.”
Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse is set to release on 4K Blu-ray, Blu-ray, and DVD on September 5, 2023.
