Pixar Director Pete Sohn Originally Voiced Ganke In 'Spider-Man: Into The Spider-Verse'

After watching Spider-Man: Into the Spiderverse, I ran home and downloaded the Miles Morales comic books on Marvel Unlimited because I didn't want my time with the characters to end. The heart of the Ultimate Spider-Man comic book run is Miles Morales relationship with his best friend, a comic book-loving geek named Ganke. After reading the comics, it's honestly the only thing I wish they had included in the animated film. We later learned that Ganke is actually Miles' non-speaking roommate, and producers have promised he will have a much bigger role in the sequels.

During an interview to promote the release of Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse on home video, filmmakers Peter Ramsey, Bob Persichetti and Rodney Rothman told me that Ganke was their favorite part of the initial three-hour cut of the film, but he ended up on the cutting room floor. And I learned that Pixar alum Pete Sohn was actually brought in to voice the character when he was a much larger part of the film.

For those who don't recognize the name, Sohn is a longtime Pixar animator who voices characters like Emile in Ratatouille and Squishy in Monsters University. He also provided the inspiration for Russell from Up and directed The Good Dinosaur.

We're here talking about the home video release. I'm wondering what kind of deleted and alternate scenes we can find on this thing? Which are some of the favorites that didn't quite make it?Rodney Rothman: It's going to be really nice for people to see the Ganke and Miles stuff. Ganke was Miles' roommate in the comics. We were originally being very faithful to the comics and that relationship was, it was there before, before school. Yeah. It was close to being the emotional backbone of the movie, those two guys' relationship in a way. Which is probably one reason that's not there anymore. But it was so charming and we had so much fun with it and it took up so much of the movie for so long that when we had to finally shift gears and cut that way back, it was a huge, uh, it was kind of traumatic. So it's nice that people get to see a literal alternate universe version of the comics.Bob Persichetti: We also had some great... one of my college friends did the voice for Ganke.Rodney Rothman: Also a wildly famous animation director.Bob Persichetti: Yeah. Yeah. He won't get in trouble anymore cause we talked to the people at Pixar, right? Pete Sohn, he's like a magic man, right. He went to cal arts when I went to cal arts. So he came down and he's Korean American, from the Bronx, and is a giant lover of comic books and that is that character. And it was just like, there's nobody else but Pete who should do this character. And he came down, recorded the whole movie and it's really, it's really good. But the movie was three hours long and there was no room for Peter to come into the movie. So it wasn't because of Spiderman: Homecoming?Bob Persichetti: You can read into it what you want, but yes, there were some Ned similarities.

There was a lot of Ganke in the movie about 18 months ago but when they borrowed so much of Ganke for Ned we worried auds would think we were ripping off Homecoming so we simplified his story and left it for the next movie

— Phil Lord (@philiplord) January 3, 2019

Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse arrives on Digital on February 26, 2019 and 4K, Blu-ray and DVD on March 19, 2019.