Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse was the best superhero film in a very long time, shaking up the increasingly repetitive superhero origin story with a barrage of psychedelic imagery, snappy dialogue and real heart. It’s gone on to be a box office success and an award winner, too, recently picking up a richly deserved Best Animated Feature Oscar.
Of course, with success like this comes opportunity, with Sony eager to capitalize on the film via several spinoffs. We’ve already heard confirmation of a sequel to the movie, as well as rumors about Spider-Man 2099 and Spider-Man Noir films, but now we’re hearing from a trusted source that there’s going to be a fully fledged John Mulaney-voiced Spider-Ham TV show, too.
A clue as to what this might look like comes on the Spider-Verse home video release, which features the Spider-Ham mini-movie Caught in a Ham. The short explains the events through which Peter Porker became involved in what we see in the film, with director Miguel Jiron taking influence from John Kricfalusi and classic Looney Tunes cartoons. When they announced this, most assumed it’d was just a nice little bonus feature, but now it appears that it may end up being a stealth pilot for the series.
But Spider-Ham isn’t some novelty invented just for the movie. Created by Tom DeFalco and Mark Armstrong in 1983, the character had an ongoing bi-monthly comic book series and launched Marvel’s Earth-8311, in which everyone’s favorite superheroes are all anthropomorphic animals. Presumably, any TV show would look to this for inspiration, so expect to see awesome characters like Ducktor Doom (Doctor Doom, but a duck), Goose Rider (Ghost Rider, but a goose) and Deerdevil ( I think you can work this one out for yourself).
As of yet, we don’t know who the creative team will be, but I’d bet that the Caught in a Ham director Miguel Jiron will be prominently involved, with Phil Lord and Christopher Miller on producing duties. More on the Spider-Ham TV show as and when we hear it.
