Sony‘s upcoming animated film Spider-Man: Beyond the Spider-Verse is partially inspired by the live-action Disney classic The Parent Trap.
Per Dextero, Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse producers/co-writers Phil Lord and Chris Miller and co-director Joaquim Dos Santos discussed the upcoming sequel in an interview with Empire. The trio revealed some of their initial plans for Across the Spider-Verse that ended up being saved for Beyond the Spider-Verse — specifically regarding Miles Morales/Spider-Man‘s villainous multiversal double.
According to Dos Santos, one early concept gave Miles and his variant a Prince and the Pauper-esque dynamic. Miller added that the alternate Miles was initially meant to feature more heavily in Across the Spider-Verse. “Basically, the thing that is now the very, very end of the movie was the bulk of the original concept,” Miller said.
Furthermore, Across the Spider-Verse’s story originally featured “some Parent Trap elements.” “Basically, that ended up becoming the second half of the movie, which then ended up becoming mostly the third movie,” Miller explained.
Beyond the Spider-Verse teases a place-switching story
For the uninitiated, Disney’s The Parent Trap originally released in theaters in 1961. Based on the 1949 novel Lisa and Lottie, the film centers on two identical-looking girls who meet at summer camp and discover they are actually long-lost twin sisters whose parents had divorced. They hatch a scheme to reunite their family by switching places when it’s time to go home. A trilogy of made-for-television sequels released from 1986 to 1989. A remake of the original film starring Lindsay Lohan hit theaters in 1998.
The premise of The Parent Trap is quite similar to that of Mark Twain’s 1881 novel The Prince and the Pauper. In Twain’s historical fiction piece, a young Edward VI of England trades lives with a poor boy who looks exactly like him. With all that in mind, Dos Santos and Miller’s comments seem to suggest that Beyond the Spider-Verse will see Miles and his multiversal counterpart swap places to some extent.
How did Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse end?
Across the Spider-Verse opened in theaters this past June as a sequel to the Oscar-winning 2018 film Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse. In the sequel’s climax, Miles Morales draws the ire of the multiversal Spider-Society. The Spider-Man of Brooklyn manages to escape, though instead of returning to his own universe, he ends up in the universe the radioactive spider that bit him originates from. In this world, Spider-Man never existed, with its own version of Miles instead becoming the villainous Prowler.
Trilogy-capper Beyond the Spider-Verse will resolve this cliffhanger ending. That said, it remains to be seen when the film will actually hit theaters. Beyond the Spider-Verse was previously slated for release on March 29, 2024. However, Sony has since delayed the film indefinitely.
Spider-Man: Beyond the Spider-Verse does not currently have a release date.
