By February 2015, it was finally official: Marvel and Sony had brokered a complicated joint-custody deal that would use the Avengers to launch Tom Holland’s younger, more earnest take on Parker in three M.C.U. films. Holland would also star in a trilogy of films co-produced by Marvel Studios and Sony, with Robert Downey Jr.’s Tony Stark dropping by to give the new franchise a star-powered boost. The deal was a smashing success; Holland swiftly became the emotional core of the decade-in-the-making Avengers: Infinity War, and Sony used the success of Holland’s debut to make further plans.

But Marvel and Sony’s Spider-Man deal is densely complicated, and restricts what Sony can do with the live-action Spider-Verse. Animation, however, is a different story.

Even before the hack and the Marvel deal changed the game, Sony and Pascal were eager to team up once more with Phil Lord and Chris Miller, who got their start working with Pascal on films like Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs and 21 Jump Street. The studio offered them the animated Spider-Man project and, in turn, the pair pitched Sony a story centered on the first black Spider-Man (technically half-black, half-Latino), Miles Morales—a relatively new comic-book creation, inspired, in part, by actor Donald Glover and the fan-driven campaign to have him play the role that eventually went to Andrew Garfield in the second live-action Spider-series.

Lord and Miller said they came up with the idea of having an older Peter Parker mentor Miles on their own—but when they discovered Slott’s Spider-Verse, they were inspired to add several more Spider-People to the mix. “We lucked out,” Lord said. “Someone had done the work for us.”

Though Lord has the main screenwriting credit on Into the Spider-Verse, he insists the process was a fluid and collaborative one involving Miller, other producers, comic-book writers, and the film’s three directors: Peter Ramsey, Bob Persichetti, and Rodney Rothman. Much of the film took shape over a long text message chain between the directors and producers. Jokes were scribbled last minute on Post-its, or simply tried on the fly at the microphone. The script writing wasn’t finished until just a few weeks before the premiere.

Pascal, for her part, said the smartest thing she did was keep quiet and out of their way. Though Lord and Miller’s loose, improvisational style caused a much-publicized rift with Lucasfilm—who very publicly fired them from the Han Solo origin story Solo in 2017—it was perfectly suited to the world of animation, where experimentation and alt-takes aren’t nearly so costly.

The resulting screenplay is not only a riot, it’s exceedingly useful for Sony’s future franchising plans. Drawing from Slott’s story line, in which multiple Spider-powered characters from different dimensions team up to combat evil, Into the Spider-Verse opens up a galaxy of possibilities—and unshackles Sony from the continuity concerns that can weigh down other massive superhero endeavors. Sony’s licensing deal with Marvel includes rights to roughly 900 characters—and Pascal sounded downright giddy when she spoke about the potential for “all kinds of stories and worlds that can happen simultaneously.”

There’s still some caution around flooding the market with Spider-People; Lord considered crowding as many as 10 more of them into Spider-Verse, but ultimately nixed the idea so that Miles’s origin story wasn’t diluted. Then again, each of the Spider-People who do join Miles—Peter Parker, Spider-Gwen, Spider-Noir, Spider-Ham, and Peni Parker—are also primed to potentially lead their own standalone Spider-Universe project, broadening the franchise across age, gender, and global brackets in the process. Peni Parker could easily launch an all-anime Spider-movie; Spider-Noir could get his own moody, black-and-white production. The producers are especially thrilled by the spin-off potential of John Mulaney’s Looney Tunes–esque Spider-Ham: “Of course! You can imagine how much the kids love that character,” Pascal explained. “Yeah,” longtime Spider-Man producer Avi Arad added. “We want piggy.”