On March 29 2023, Sony announced “The Spider-Within”, a story about Miles having an anxiety attack due to juggling his responsibilities as Spider-Man and his social life.
The short film has been shown at Three festivals so far, Annecy, Animation Is Film Festival and Lightbox Expo.
The Spider-Within has been met with great positive reviews from critics and fans, who praise it for its representation of anxiety attacks and for the horror elements of the film.
Unfortunately, the film did leak online but fans who saw it also praised it for all the same reasons above so the question is why hasn’t it got an official release date yet and why wasn’t it a bonus feature for the media/physical release of Across the Spider-verse?
Well VFX artist for both spider-verse films Blauereiter has the answer.
While quote retweeting a post from the news page “Culture Crave” about the Spider-Within they said
I worked on this #SpiderVerse short con-currently while working on the film. Pity it wasn’t included on the blu-ray release as an extra ( rights are tricky, I know ).
Hopefully it gets a wider release so more can see it though. 🙏
They mentioned during the tweet about rights, but the question is what rights are stopping the short film from being released?
Well, I have a theory on that and how Sony could get around the rights problem for the Spider-Within.
So What Is The “Rights” Problem
well, the “rights” Blauereiter is probably talking about are the character rights for Spider-Man.
It’s believed that Sony has the rights for spider-man for anything that’s longer than 45 minutes, while Disney has the rights to the character for anything under 45 minutes, if this is the case then Disney would have the rights to the Spider-Within due to the fact the short film is only 6 minutes long.
But this does raise the question “How can they show it at festivals?”
Since I’m not sure, I’m just going to make a guess and say since it’s being shown behind closed doors it’s allowed but that’s just a guess.
So how can they show this short film publicly?
Well here are a few guesses I’ve come up with on where we might see the short film.
Madame Web/Venom 3/Kraven The Hunter
Sony currently has four Marvel films scheduled to release next year (subject to change), Madame Web, Venom 3 and Kraven The Hunter.
If Sony wanted to, they could attach the short film to any of these releases to play before a film starts or after as a post-credit scene.
Across The Spider-verse Extended Version
I won’t go too much into it as I want to save this theory for another article, but if Sony were to ever announce an Across the Spider-verse extended version, then having the short film play before Across the Spider-verse starts would make sense since this short film does take place before Across the spider-verse.
Beyond The Spider-Verse
Although attaching it to Beyond the Spider-Verse would make sense, this option would suck due to the film being years away from release.
Non Marvel Sony Film
Most unlikely to happen, but if Sony wanted to attach the Spider-Within to a random film they think needs a bit of help at the box office then this is an option they can do.
YouTube
Due to character rights, this might be tricky to do, but it’s an option.
Disney Plus
If the character rights do fall into Disney’s hands due to how short the Spider-Within is, then the film would definitely feel at home among the other Spider-Man and Marvel content Disney has on the app.
unfortunately, if the rights can’t be sorted for the Spider-Within then the film will become lost media, which would be Ashame as from what I have seen of it this film, even though it’s only about 7 minutes, is amazing and should be seen by everyone so I hope Sony can sort things out for everyone’s sake.
Spider-Man News 