Spider-Noir, the live-action TV series about a Spider-Man variant in the 1930s, premieres this Wednesday on Prime Video. Led by Nicolas Cage, who voiced Spider-Man Noir in the animated Spider-Verse films, the show dips into Marvel comic book lore and centers on an entirely different version of the web-slinging hero. He’s not an alternate version of Peter Parker, he’s Ben Reilly in this universe — aka Spider-Noir.
It’s a unique, standalone story helmed by showrunner Oren Uziel that’s separate from all the other Spider-Man movies and shows that already exist (nope, it’s not a spinoff of any kind). That gave the creative team the opportunity to introduce Spider-Noir’s multiversal cast of characters. While Cage brings a sense of familiarity to the show in a fresh way, the series also includes Li Jun Li as Cat Hardy, Jack Huston as Sandman and Abraham Popoola, who plays Tombstone.
Leaning heavily into the mystery crime-drama style of noir, Spider-Noir lets viewers get acquainted with villains and antiheroes whose names may ring a bell thanks to Sony’s movies or Marvel comics. Yet, after watching all the episodes, I can say, despite a few familiar character names, it’s a take we haven’t really seen before — it’s mature and suspenseful, with complicated relationships and conflicted criminals.
Still, it’s another way to see Marvel characters and mythology manifest on screen, and Li, Popoola and Huston had distinct reasons for why they were attracted to their roles.
“The writing. The groundedness of this world that makes every single character in this series so human,” explained Li. “Even within their powers, they’re still human, being dealt a really difficult card.”
Taking place in New York City during the Great Depression, Spider-Noir weaves elements of the time period into its plot. World War I and Prohibition are part of the series’ conversations and storyline, and Popoola was struck by the history.
“For me, it was the era,” he said. “It’s such a rich era historically. So interesting, so complex, so stylish, so fun. To get to throw a character that everyone knows and recognizes, for decades now, into that situation is a real delight and a real treat.”
Huston echoed his co-stars and added, “It’s a real treat to be doing something that I think hasn’t really been done before.” The actor pointed to the show’s rendering in two visual formats for viewing, which Prime Video has dubbed “Authentic Black & White” and “True-Hue Full Color.”
“To be able to offer this in black-and-white and color, that hasn’t happened before,” he said. “It’s very hard to do something unique and original, and this is exactly that. I feel very special to be part of the whole process.”
Swing back to 2023, when it was first announced that a new Spider-Noir story would hit the screen with Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse producers Phil Lord and Chris Miller were on board for the project. Along with Amy Pascal (the producer and exec behind Tom Holland’s Spider-Man films, the Venom franchise and Spider-Verse movies), the pair teamed up with Uziel to shape Spider-Noir into a TV production.
I mentioned to Uziel that, rather than hit us with lots of action scenes, the show is grounded in smartly paced mystery and drama. What inspired the storytelling in Spider-Noir and even the character choices we see in Tombstone, Flint, Silvermane and Cat Hardy? Turns out, Humphrey Bogart and Cage had something to do with that.
“When I first sat down with Nic [Cage], and we talked a lot about it, we realized we both had a real love and kind of an encyclopedic knowledge of film noir,” he shared. He explained how that drove the story with lots of discussion around “What if you could make a Bogart movie where Bogart just happened to be Spider-Man?”
Dedicated to these themes, the pair drew from their cinematic mind vaults (Uziel cited The Third Man, Double Indemnity, Miller’s Crossing, LA Confidential and Casablanca) to map out a vision for the series. Draped in shadowy imagery, the show has all the ingredients of what you’d expect in the genre: the pessimistic detective, a femme fatale, backstabbing and flashbacks.
Though Spider-Noir is true to its name, there are some small influences from other Marvel hero films sprinkled in, according to Uziel.
“I grew up and revered the Sam Raimi Spider-Man movies, so there’s a sort of aesthetic that I love, and I really wanted to infuse some of that into the old noir aesthetic as well,” he said. “I think there’s sort of a practicality to a lot of what he did there, and an energy that I grew up loving.”
All eight episodes of Spider-Noir can be binged on Prime Video on Wednesday, May 27.
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