Nicolas Cage Returns as Ben Reilly in SpiderNoir Series

Nicolas Cage returns to the role of Spider-Man Noir in the upcoming live-action series "SpiderNoir," set to premiere on MGM+ and Prime Video in spring 2026. The eight-episode drama reimagines the character as Ben Reilly, a retired private investigator in 1930s New York City who confronts his past as a vigilante known as The Spider while battling organized crime.

The series draws from the 2009 Marvel Comics miniseries "Spider-Man Noir," which depicted a gritty, alternate-universe Peter Parker fighting corruption in a Depression-era setting. Here, producers have shifted the protagonist to Ben Reilly, a figure first introduced in Marvel's "The Amazing Spider-Man" No. 149 in 1974 as a clone of Peter Parker. Reilly's comic history includes the complex "Clone Saga" storyline in the 1990s, where he briefly assumed the role of Spider-Man before his apparent death and later resurrections as the Scarlet Spider. Co-showrunner Oren Uziel explained the choice as fitting the noir genre's focus on human darkness, stating that Reilly represents a "down-on-his-luck" hero whose optimism has faded into a midlife crisis. "The Chinatown comparison is apt," Uziel told Esquire, likening Reilly to a...