Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse producers Phil Lord and Christopher Miller have paid tribute to the late Spider-Man creator Stan Lee, calling him empowering and funny.
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Watch Alan Corr's interview with Phil Lord and Christopher Miller
Speaking to RTÉ Entertainment, the duo, who previously made The Lego Movie and 21 Jump Street, said they received letters from Lee, who died last November, while they were growing up.
"Well, you know, from when we were kids he was communicating with us in the form of his writing and his letters to fans," said Lord.
"They always had a lot of exclamation points and they were enthusiastic and really welcoming and empowering and he was really funny. So the idea that you could really write in that way, which was really inspirational, really funny, and really inclusive.
"He created a community for us when we were very young and we wanted to just pass the baton and try to continue that legacy with this picture."
In a movie full of Easter eggs, Lee makes his last cameo appearance, playing a comic book shop proprietor with a rather wicked sense of humour in Spider-Man; Into the Spider-Verse. "We wanted to give him a cameo that wasn’t just an aside moment in a random spot," said Miller.
"But in a place that actually had some emotional weight to it and as well as being inspiring an funny, we wanted to honour his legacy when we were making the movie and now after his passing it’s added a whole new level of poignancy but it still feels inspirational to me."
Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse is one of the most ambitious animated movies ever made and was created by a thousand-strong crew, including 160 animators, the most animators ever on a movie. It took the artists a week to produce one second of screen time.
"It was a very ambitious script but we don’t seem to be satisfied unless we’re doing something crazy and impossible where we might mess up and be embarrassed," said Lord.
Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse is in cinemas now
