- Film focuses on Miles Morales’ struggle to balance being a superhero with being a teenager, a friend and a student
- Film is in partnership with mental health organization the Kevin Love Fund
- Aims to help students to tell their own mental health stories and realise benefits of reaching out for help.
A new Spider-Verse short film will be released later this month by Sony, which will focus on mental health.
The companies behind the Spider-Verse films, Sony Pictures Animation and Imageworks, have partnered with the Kevin Love Fund to produce the short, titled The Spider Within: A Spider-Verse Story, which will air on Sony Pictures Animation’s YouTube channel at 6pm PT on March 27.
In the short, set in the Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse universe, Miles Morales struggles to juggle his life as Spider-Man as well as the regular teenage pressures of being a student and a friend.
After a particularly challenging day, these pressures build up and lead to Miles experiencing a panic attack. Following this, he learns to confront the things that are causing his anxiety and that to ask for help can be just as brave as fighting supervillains in New York.
The short will also be incorporated into mental health-focused lesson plan ‘The Hero Within’ for the Kevin Love Fund, which invites students to tell their own story through the lens of mental health awareness, according to a press release by Sony.
“Miles represents so many of us doing the best we can in our day-to-day lives,” said Jarelle Dampier, who directed The Spider Within. “We don’t often realize all that we have been through until our own body forces us to become aware of its experience. My intention is that The Spider Within can motivate deeper conversations amongst friends and family about their own mental health journeys – and I hope it feels like a love letter to those who adore Miles Morales.”
