There are many things kids around the world love. Kids often love playing with toys such as Legos, superhero figures and watching movies. A teenager got the rare opportunity to combine these loves and be featured in a potential blockbuster movie.
What Happened: Fourteen-year-old Preston Mutanga is now a featured creator within the universe of Spider-Man movies.
Mutanga helped create a scene for “Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse,” a recent animated film from Sony Group Corp SONY.
Mutanga helped create elements for a dimension in the movie that resembles Lego blocks and figures and pays tribute to “The Lego Movie,” as reported by The New York Times.
Mutanga, who lives in Toronto, created a shot-for-shot trailer version of “Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse” using animated Lego characters. The video drew the attention of producers on the film who asked him to help with the scene.
The trailer was created using old computers belonging to his dad.
“My dad showed me this 3-D software called Blender and I instantly got hooked on it. I watched a lot of YouTube videos to teach myself certain stuff,” Mutanga told the New York Times.
“The Lego Movie” directors Phil Lord and Christopher Miller are also the writers and producers and writers on “Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse.” The trailer from Mutanga drew attention and went viral, leading to the producers seeing the video.
When the producers decided to include a Lego universe in their Spider-Man movie, producer Christina Steinberg reached out to Mutanga to ask if he wanted to help out.
“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 told The New York Times. “It blew us all away, including some of the best animators in the world.”
Born to immigrant parents from Cameroon, Mutanga showed a creative side from a young age. Instead of building Lego sets the way they were meant to with the included instructions, Mutanga often built his own designs.
“I also used to make comics when I was younger. Looking back at them now, they’re not the greatest, I’m not going to lie, but it was good practice for telling stories.”
Mutanga’s parents were skeptical that it was really the producers and Sony reaching out to the child, but soon realized it was legitimate.
“I know Preston has a gift that was given to him by God, and once we identified that he had that gift, all we could do as parents was to nurture it and let him fly,” his mother Gisele Mutanga said.
Mutanga’s father Theodore Mutanga bought a new computer and new graphics card for his son to help with the work.
Preston worked on the Lego sequences for the Spider-Man movie during spring break from school and on school nights after completing his homework. The fourteen-year-old checked in bi-weekly with Miller on progress.
Related Link: Toymaker Lego Posts 17% Revenue Growth In 2022
Why It’s Important: Mutanga is still a student in high school but wants to be a full-time animator and director when he’s done with school.
“I adored the first movie and was so hyped for the second one, so getting to work with the people who actually made this masterpiece was honestly like a dream,” Mutanga said.
“Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse” grossed $120.7 million in its opening weekend and has made $148.7 million domestically in its first six days, according to data from BoxOfficeMojo. Internationally the movie has grossed $87.9 million, taking the worldwide total to $236.6 million.
The original 2018 “Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse” grossed $190.2 million domestically and $194.0 million internationally for a total of $384.3 million.
Mutanga has nearly 80,000 followers on Twitter, where he labels himself an artist, animator and Lego enthusiast. Mutanga’s Twitter bio also says he “animated on #Spiderverse,” a career accomplishment others can’t claim.
On YouTube, Mutanga has over 100,000 followers for his channel.
There are many lessons readers can take from Mutanga’s success story. One would be to let your creative side out and not be afraid of doing what you love and want to do later on in your life.
Another lesson would be the strength of social media and how videos and posts can often capture the attention of some of the biggest people in the world.
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Photo: Movie poster, IMDb
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