/Film reached out to Sony for comment, but they declined to add to the news. Speaking to Vulture, Michelle Grady, the executive vice-president and general manager of Sony Pictures Imageworks, refused to put the blame on Phil Lord reworking the film. “It really does happen on every film,” said Grady, commenting on the film’s heavy revisions and reworking. “Truly, honestly, it can be a little bit frustrating, but we always try to explain that this is the process.”
“Welcome to making a movie,” added Amy Pascal, the former Sony Pictures Entertainment chairperson who produced both “Spider-Verse” movies.
Now, there is some truth to Grady’s comments, even if that last bit was quite tactless. In the Vulture article, one of the anonymous animators stated, “For animated movies, the majority of the trial-and-error process happens during writing and storyboarding. Not with fully completed animation.” This is simply untrue. It may not be the norm, but it does happen, a lot. Just take “Toy Story 2,” a movie that was almost completely rewritten midway through production and led to grueling working conditions. Then there’s “The Emperor’s New Groove,” a fun Disney animated film that’s the result of so many rewrites and so much revisiting there’s an entire documentary literally called “The Sweatbox” that explores just how dramatically the movie changed over the course of its development.