During an interview with electronic warfaredirector Kemp Powers and producers Phil Lord AND Chris Miller they talked about Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse and, in particular, Daniel Kalui’s character, Spider Punk.
While developing the character, the art team began using clips of the actor to inspire his speech even before he was cast.
In addition, there was a moment when they thought to move the character’s presence to the third film, but then the producers hired Kaluuya, and everything changed, as Lord said:
We weren’t sure which elements to use in this part and which in the next. When we met Daniel Kaluuya, we knew that he absolutely had to play Hobie Brown no matter what, and that Hobie needed to be in the film because we needed his personality.
The goal was to make Spider-Punk a strong character, as Miller added:
The problem is that Miles is a really cool character, one of the coolest Spider-Man you can think of. Finding a character that was even more interesting was not easy.
Powers then spoke about the scene where Hobie takes off his mask for the first time in front of Miles:
Initially, there was no joke, because we added it after viewing the first version. “How can you be even cooler under the mask?”. Daniel improvised a series of jokes, which he began by saying, “I’ve always been cool.” And we kept it in the movie.
Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse hit theaters last June, will hit home video in September. Find all the information about the film in our profile.