Photo of a person posing in front of the Spiderverse poster

Shutterstock.com (background); Courtesy of Sony Pictures (all other images)

Article Options

Presentation View
Teaching Resources

Language

I Helped Create the Spider-Verse

How did a kid from Canada get to work on one of the year’s biggest movies?

As You Read, Think About: If you got the chance to work on a movie, what job would you want?

Spider-Man swung back into movie theaters in a big way this year. Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse follows Miles Morales as he visits other universes. Along the way, he meets many other Spider-People, each created in a different style of animation. 

About 1,000 crew members worked to bring the Spider-Verse to life. One of them was 14-year-old Preston Mutanga. Here’s how the teen from Milton, Canada, landed his dream job.

Courtesy of Sony Pictures

Preston at work on his home computer. 

A Bright Idea

Courtesy of Sony Pictures

Before this year, Preston’s only moviemaking experience was creating short videos of Lego characters for his YouTube channel. He had been using special software to make 3-D Lego characters since he was about 9 years old. He’s also a big fan of the 2018 movie Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse. So when he saw the trailer for the sequel last December, he got an idea. 

“What if I remade the trailer in Lego?” he recalls thinking. “It would be a cool experiment.”

Preston spent about two weeks making his trailer on a computer in his bedroom. It was identical to the original except everything was made of Lego pieces: the characters, the buildings, even the spiderwebs. He posted the video online on January 2 and was shocked by the response. 

“All of a sudden, it just started blowing up,” he says. 

A Dream Come True

Preston’s trailer eventually racked up hundreds of thousands of views. Among the fans of his work were the producers of Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse. A member of the production team contacted Preston to set up a meeting on Zoom.

During the call, the producers told Preston they wanted to include a Lego universe in the movie. They showed him storyboards, or sketches, of what the scene would look like. Then came the best part: They asked Preston to animate it!

“I was super surprised,” he recalls. “It took me a minute to process that my sequence was actually going to be a part of the real movie.”

Courtesy of Sony Pictures

Part of the scene Preston created for Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse

Movie Magic

Preston spent about three months creating the Lego scene. He met with the producers every few days to show them his progress and made changes based on their feedback. 

Preston worked on the project during spring break, on weekends, and after finishing his homework on school nights. One of the biggest challenges? He had to keep his new job secret from everyone but his parents.

Preston finally got to see his scene on the big screen in May. He was invited to the premiere of Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse in Los Angeles, California. 

“I loved seeing the audience’s reaction to my scene,” he says. “It was just really heartwarming.”

By mid-August, the movie had earned more than $680 million worldwide, making it one of the biggest films of the year. Preston says his journey into the Spider-Verse shows that you should always follow your dreams. 

“Don’t ever let anyone tell you, ‘Oh, you’ll never achieve this,’” Preston says. “No, you can. Honestly, you can.”

Get to Know Spider-Man

Courtesy of Sony Pictures
  • Writer Stan Lee and artist Steve Ditko teamed up to create Spider-Man—a teen named Peter Parker who gained superpowers after being bitten by a radioactive spider.

  • Spider-Man first appeared in Marvel’s Amazing Fantasy comic book in 1962. In 2021, a copy of that first comic sold for $3.6 million.

  • Lee considered calling the character Fly-Man, Insect-Man, or Mosquito-Man.

  • The character Miles Morales became Marvel’s first Black Spider-Man in 2011. He lives in a separate universe from the original Spider-Man.

1. How did Preston Mutanga’s Lego trailer first get attention?

2. Based on the article, what are storyboards?

3. What is the purpose of the sidebar, “Get to Know Spider-Man”?

Skills Sheets (2)
Skills Sheets (2)
Games (1)
Slideshows (1)
TEACHER SUPPORT (1)
Text-to-Speech