‘Spider-Verse’ Directors on What to Expect From Third Movie and Demanding Respect for Animation: ‘Without It, Everybody Hurts’
variety.comClayton Davis Senior Awards Editor In case you didn’t know, animation directors are also auteurs. According to Yahoo Finance, the global animation market reached more than $400 billion at the end of 2023.
That was up from $391 billion one year before. And yet, animated projects are not automatically covered by the WGA, are separate from the DGA, and are consistently overlooked for their filmmaking achievements.
Joaquim Dos Santos, Kemp Powers, and Justin K. Thompson, the directing trio of Sony Animation’s animated box office smash “Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse,” tell Variety‘s Awards Circuit Podcast that there are some critically needed changes in Hollywood. “I think it’s worth repeating: animation is a big business for the industry,” says Dos Santos. “We bring a ton to the table; without it, everybody hurts.
I also want to add that doing an animated film shouldn’t be a sacrifice for the artist doing it.” Powers adds: “I do both [writing and animation], and it’s hard to convince a writer who’s in WGA to write on an animated feature for the simple reason it doesn’t pay into their medical insurance.
Read more on variety.com
