For the latest chapter in Sony’s Spider-Verse, Spider-Noir creator and co-showrunner Oren Uziel was already a fan of the noir genre and Spider-Man before he signed on. That meant he and actor-producer Nicolas Cage could spend more of their time, all the way back to writing the pilot, unpacking a single question: “What if we made a Bogart movie where Bogart just happened to be Spider-Man?”
“Every single day he’d come to set with a different reference: ‘This is Bogart from The Big Sleep, this is going to be Peter Lorre. This is going to be Edward G. Robinson,'” Uziel, whose own inspirations included Third Man, Double Indemnity, The Thin Man, His Girl Friday, L.A. Confidential, Miller’s Crossing and Casablanca, said of Cage’s commitment to shaping the character and world. “Beyond that, we didn’t want to make a version of Spider-Man that anyone had seen before. Nic was never going to do that.”
The first season — which premieres domestically on MGM+’s linear broadcast channel on May 25 and globally on Prime Video May 27 — expands the story of Spider-Man Noir, who made his animated onscreen debut in 2018’s Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse. “They’re connected for sure. There’s inspiration being taken there,” Uziel said. “But when you’re making an eight-episode television series, you’re going to really expand it and broaden it. In live action, you get to see so much more of Nic’s performance and you can really fully realize New York in the ’30s.”
