It's no secret Hollywood executives are out of touch with reality. They often make flawed assumptions about audiences, a trend that continues to persist to this day.
Phil Lord and Chris Miller, the writers of Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse, spoke to Empire Magazine about their first-hand account of Hollywood studios initially assuming that viewers wouldn't grasp the concept of the multiverse. However, Chris Miller disagreed with this notion, saying:
There've been a bunch of multiverse things since ours came out. When we started on [Into The Spider-Verse], studios were nervous that audiences wouldn't be able to follow this idea of parallel dimensions. But audiences are smarter than people give them credit for. [Our film] opened the door for people to do things they wanted to do, but were afraid would be too out-there.
Phil Lord backed up Miller's observation, stating:
We probably spurred the horses. In those test screenings for Into The Spider-Verse, audiences weren't confused by the Multiverse; they were electrified by it. That must have been eye-opening for any studio executives in the room...