[UPDATE] Spider-Man: Beyond the Spider-Verse's Christopher Miller Says Leaked Footage Is 'Unfinished' and 'Not Fully Rendered'

UPDATE: Writer and producer Christopher Miller has addressed the Spider-Man: Beyond The Spider-Verse leak in a post on social media.

"Not a fan of leaks of unfinished, not fully rendered footage," he said in a tweet.

The comment confirms the legitimacy of the footage, but also suggests it's not what fans can expect to see in the finished movie when it comes out next year. It is unclear how the footage made its way online.

ORIGINAL STORY: The hotly anticipated Spider-Man: Beyond The Spider-Verse has suffered a significant leak, with four minutes of footage hitting social media today.

Sony is currently battling to scrub the footage from the likes of X / Twitter, but it faces an uphill challenge as users share the clip across multiple social channels.

The footage, which appears to be from the opening of the animated movie, also includes a trailer montage that points to the current June 18, 2027 release date. It is thought this is the footage shown behind closed doors at CinemaCon earlier this year.

This is the latest video leak Sony and indeed Marvel have suffered in recent years, with everything from Tom Holland’s Spider-Man films to Avengers: Doomsday content leaking all over the internet.

Beyond The Spider-Verse, directed by Bob Persichetti and Justin K. Thompson, with a story written by Phil Lord, Christopher Miller, and David Callaham, is the final chapter of Sony Pictures Animation's Oscar-winning Spider-Verse saga. It follows 2018's Into the Spider-Verse and 2023's Across the Spider-Verse. If the animated movie hits its current release date, it’ll arrive four years after Across the Spider-Verse and eight years after Into the Spider-Verse came out.

Here’s the official description:

Hunted by Miguel O’Hara’s Spider Society and betrayed by his friends, Miles finds himself in the darkest corners of the Spider-Verse in search of a way home. Knowing that his family has been not only fractured but endangered by his calling, it’s a race against the clock for Miles to travel across the wildest reaches of time and space to fight for and reunite everything he holds most dear.

Speaking to Variety in March, Lord and Miller insisted Beyond the Spider-Verse was on track, calling the movie the “most emotional” film in the trilogy. “It’s on schedule and it’s going to be beautiful and emotional,” Lord said. “I would say the most emotional of the three,” Miller added. He went on to talk about the new ways Spot is being animated.

Warning! Spoilers for the Spider-Verse movies follow:

Dr. Johnathon Ohnn, aka the Spot, is the main antagonist of the Spider-Verse movies. The former Alchemax scientist was transformed into a portal-creating supervillain when Miles Morales destroyed Kingpin’s Super-Collider. Spot is really, really angry at Miles, who he blames for ruining his life. And at the end of Across the Spider-Verse, after becoming incredibly powerful, he sets out to murder Miles' father, Jefferson Davis.

Spot steals pretty much every scene he’s in, with his wonderfully animated portal power fuelling increasingly elaborate, mind-bending action scenes. “... there are some new things they’re developing for the look… of what Spot does specifically that are extra amazing,” Miller said, teasing even more Spot mayhem.

“They’re really extraordinary. They’re going to be great,” Lord said, adding: “... artistically… It’s going to take you to places of abstraction that I think are going to be really special.”

In February, Lord and Miller explained why Beyond the Spider-Verse was taking so long. They said that a lot of the delay had to do with the pressure they put on themselves to outdo the previous two movies, which enjoyed critical and commercial acclaim, and the sheer amount of work required to come up with something that would do just that. Then there were issues that came with the decision to split the sequel in two, and subsequently having to piece it back together to create not just a coherent trilogy, but coherent individual movies.

“At one point it was one movie, but there was too much movie there, so it was separated into two,” Miller told io9. “But then once you looked at that second half of a movie, you’re like, ‘Well, that’s like not just a story arc that has a beginning, middle, and end.”

“We know where it’s headed, but we need to understand better what’s happening in the middle,” Lord added. “And we came upon a really wonderful notion, which is when your family is broken apart by your calling, your talents, how do you put them back together? How do you have it all?”

“We put the most pressure on ourselves,” Miller went on to say. “There’s no one that puts more pressure on us than ourselves, wanting to outdo ourselves each time and see things that you haven’t seen before and make it feel like something you’ve never experienced before. And so, trying to get something that is as worthy as the previous two has been the driver.”

“Having to take it apart to put it back together again was really, really [the] real thing that made it take longer,” Miller said.

Daniel Kaluuya, who played Hobart "Hobie" Brown / Spider-Punk in Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse, is set to play the same character in Beyond the Spider-Verse (he’s also set to reprise the role in a Spider-Punk animated spinoff). Marvin Jones III, who voices supervillain Tombstone in Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, is also set to reprise his role for Beyond the Spider-Verse.

Wesley is Director, News at IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at wesley_yinpoole@ign.com or confidentially at wyp100@proton.me.