‘Watch Dogs: Legion’ Cinematic Trailer Is ‘Spider-Verse’ On Steroids

Video game publisher Ubisoft, recently in the news for unfortunate reasons, has released a cinematic trailer called “Tipping Point” for its upcoming title Watch Dogs: Legion.

If the piece looks and feels a lot like Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, it’s because the director is Alberto Mielgo, who created the piece through his independent production company Pinkman.tv and DDB Paris.

Mielgo was the original production designer of Spider-Verse and established the visual language of the production, before he was fired from the production for reasons that have never been made entirely clear. He ended up credited as “visual consultant,” a thankless designation considering that his development work on the film largely became the template for the rest of the production.

Some of the creative tensions on Spider-Verse between Mielgo and the Sony crew appear to have stemmed from the fact that Mielgo wanted to push the graphic style further than the rest of the team. This Watch Dogs piece feels like Mielgo is taking care of unfinished business, in effect showing audiences what Spider-Verse could have looked like if he’d had his way.

In addition to this piece, Mielgo recently directed the multi-Emmy-winning “The Witness” segment of Netflix’s anthology Love, Death & Robots. Last year, a deal was announced with Greg Silverman’s independent prodco Stampede for Mielgo to write and direct an original animated feature.