Lord and Miller Develop Animated Spider-Man Feature for Sony

The LEGO Movie directors Phil Lord and Christopher Miller have signed on to develop an animated Spider-Man movie for Sony with an eye to directing the feature.

The project already has a release set for July 20, 2018, the studio announced this week at CinemaCon in Las Vegas.

Lord and Miller, who previously directed Sony’s animated feature Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs and executive produced and wrote its sequel, have plenty of superhero material in the works. In addition to scripting a revival of the 1980s TV series Greatest American Hero, they are producing the upcoming Batman LEGO movie and writing the story for The Flash live-action feature for Warner Bros. That’s on top of executive producing WB’s Storks, producing another Lego spinoff with Ninjago, and producing and writing The LEGO Movie sequel.

Sony is proceeding with its live-action Spider-Man features, with the next entry — a reboot featuring a to-be-cast teenage Peter Parker — set for a July 28, 2017, release.

Created in the pages of Marvel Comics’ Amazing Fantasy #15 in 1962 by Stan Lee and Steve Ditko, Spider-Man has starred in many animated series over the years.

The 1960s version originally produced by Grantray-Lawrence has remained popular over the years, as has 1980s versions Spider-Man and Spider-Man and His Amazing Friends. Another popular run began airing in 1994; the short-lived CG-animated Spider-Man: The New Animated Series aired on MTV in the early 2000s; The Spectacular Spider-Man was a hit from 2008-2009; and the webslinger currently stars in the Ultimate Spider-Man series on Disney XD.

Spider-Man