As expected, “Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse” has won the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature. It’s been a bittersweet awards season for the acclaimed film, as Stan Lee passed away last November. Though they didn’t have time to do it onstage while accepting their award, the film’s directors dedicated their win to the Marvel Comics luminary and Spider-Man co-creator Steve Ditko.
“We were just gonna thank Stan Lee and Steve Ditko for really inspiring the whole thing and for being a force of believing that all of us human beings have the potential capacity to be heroes,” co-director Bob Persichetti said in the interview room.
“That was really it from day one. Phil and Chris put together a treatment and sort a statement that was essentially a challenge — a movie that challenged the audience to believe in themselves and to believe in their neighbor and really be positive and make a difference in the world. Be a mentor, be heroic. That was it. That’s from Stan Lee and Steve Ditko.”
“Into the Spider-Verse” has received widespread acclaim since its release last December, winning similar awards from the New York Film Critics Circle, Los Angeles Film Critics Association, the Golden Globes, BAFTA Awards, and Critics’ Choice Awards. Perscichetti shares his Oscar with co-directors Peter Ramsey and Rodney Rothman. It also marks the first Academy Award Sony Pictures Animation has won for a feature, with its only other Oscar going to the 2002 short “The ChubbChubbs!”