14-year-old fan animated a sequence in ‘Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse’
A 14-year-old Spider-Man fan turned his LEGOs into a professional gig working on Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse.
Back at the end of 2022, Preston Mutanga recreated the entirety of the first trailer for Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse shot-for-shot using LEGO blocks and figures. The result was later uploaded to YouTube, where individuals involved in the making of Across the Spider-Verse saw it.
The recreations caught the eyes of Phil Lord and Christopher Miller, the producers of Across the Spider-Verse. Lord and Miller had previously directed The LEGO Movie, and after seeing some of Mutanga’s videos online, they hired him to create a similar sequence for Across the Spider-Verse.
“We found out that it was a 14-year-old kid who made it and we were like, ‘This looks incredibly sophisticated for a nonadult, nonprofessional to have made,’” Miller told The New York Times. “It blew us all away, including some of the best animators in the world.”
The Toronto-based teenager worked on his segment of the film remotely, checking in with Miller on a bi-weekly basis. His work, which prominently featured the Daily Bugle building, was included in the final cut of the film.
“One new thing I learned was definitely the feedback aspect of it, like how much stuff actually gets changed from the beginning to the final product,” Mutanga said about the experience.
See the official trailer below.
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