Daniel Kaluuya’s Involvement In ‘Spider-Man: Across The Spider-Verse’ Was Key To Keeping Spider-Punk In Movie

Armando Tinoco
·2 min read
  • Oops!
    Something went wrong.
    Please try again later.
  • Oops!
    Something went wrong.
    Please try again later.

In Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse, Miles Morales (voiced by Shameik Moore), comes in contact with a whole universe of Spideys. One of the standouts was the character voiced by Daniel Kaluuya — Spider-Punk.

Now writer-producers Chris Miller and Phil Lord are opening up about how they fought to keep Spider-Punk in the animated film.

More from Deadline

“Some people were like, ‘Is there a way to simplify this? There’s so many characters. Do we really need Spider-Punk?'” Miller told Entertainment Weekly in an interview. “But once we got to know Daniel [Kaluuya], we rewrote the part so it became more necessary.”

Miller says that incorporating Spider-Punk was a “fun challenge” as they needed to make him co-exist with Miles who is “one of the coolest Spider-Men that you can think of.” The writer-producers add that when Kaluuya became involved, they knew they had to include the character.

“He was in and out of the picture for a little while because we weren’t sure which elements we were going to stick in this part and which were going to migrate to the next movie,” Lord explained. “When we met Daniel Kaluuya, we realized that he had to be Hobie Brown, no matter the cost. And Hobie had to be in the movie because that personality needed to be part of the story.”

Spider-Punk is one of the newer characters in the Marvel universe having been first introduced in 2015. The character’s real name is Hobie Brown, a homeless teenager who was transformed by a spider that was irradiated as part of President Norman Osborn’s toxic waste dumping. He leads the people of New York against Osborn’s V.E.N.O.M. troops. Spider-Punk kills Osborn during a riot by bashing the President with his guitar.

Best of Deadline

Sign up for Deadline's Newsletter. For the latest news, follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.

Click here to read the full article.