'He blew us all away'
A 14-year-old artist got to live his dream when the filmmakers behind the latest "Spider-Man" movie asked him to work on the film.
Preston Mutanga made waves earlier this year when he shared a video he made recreating the trailer for "Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse" in the style of LEGO.
The 2-minute clip went viral, finding its way to "Spider-Verse" writers and producers Chris Lord and Phil Miller.
"We found out that it was a 14-year-old kid who made it and we were like, 'This looks incredibly sophisticated for a nonadult, nonprofessional to have made," Miller, who co-directed 2014's "The LEGO Movie" with Lord, told the New York Times. "It blew us all away, including some of the best animators in the world."
When it was decided that the multiverse-hopping film would be adding a LEGO-themed sequence, the filmmakers reached out to Mutanga to offer him the chance to animate it.
They were initially met with skepticism from Mutanga's parents, who weren't sure that the offer being extended to their son was real. But once the parents were convinced, Mutanga's dad bought his son a new computer with a high-end graphics card so that he could get to work.
The teen — who is younger than the movie's 15-year-old protagonist Miles Morales — created the sequence during his spring break and on school nights, the Times reported, and would periodically meet with Miller to go over his progress.
"One new thing I learned was definitely the feedback aspect of it, like how much stuff actually gets changed from the beginning to the final product," Mutanga told the paper, adding that "getting to work with the people who actually made this masterpiece was honestly like a dream."
Mutanga's work even got his name featured in the end credits of the film.
"Across the Spider-Verse" is currently the top film at the box office, and holds a 96% critic and audience score on Rotten Tomatoes.
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Source: CNBC
