Into the Bonus-Verse: Sony Releases Short Film ‘The Spider Within’, a Terrifying Look Into the Mind of a Hero
The long wait for a sequel Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse just got a little shorter. Seven minutes shorter, to be exact.
Wednesday, Sony released a short animated film called The Spider Within: A Spider-Verse Story. In it, Miles Morales (Shameik Moore) the hero of the Spider-Verse movies, struggles to balance his responsibilities as a teenager, son, friend, and student while also fighting crime as his alter-ego, Spider-Man. After a day where the pressures on cause him to have a panic attack that forces him to confront the manifestations of his anxiety that quite literally fight him, Miles learns that true bravery includes being able to ask for help.
The Spider Within: A Spider-Verse Story was directed by Jarelle Dampier and written by Khailia Amazan, and produced for Sony by LENS program creators Michelle Raimo-Kouyate and David Schulenburg. Sony Pictures Animation produced the film in the LENS program’s inaugural year.
The project is part of a fundraising project that Sony is participating in along with the Kevin Love Fund, which the NBA all-star established to inspire people to live their healthiest lives by providing tools for both mental and physical health. The 7 minute-long Spider-Verse short is part of a lesson plan called The Hero Within, which teachers can use to help teach their students how to reach out for help when they are struggling. The the program invites kids to share their own stories via an interactive curriculum
In the film, Miles battles an evil shadow version of himself and a horde of hideous spiders, after the attack subsides, Miles reaches out to his father, Jefferson (Brian Tyree Henry) for help and the two begin the conversation about his anxiety.
The short film is available above, and is on Sony Pictures Entertainment’s YouTube page. More information about the collaboration with the Kevin Love fund can be found on their website. The actual sequel to Across the Spider-Verse, called Spider-Man: Beyond the Spider-Verse, is currently in production with no release date set yet.