Nicolas Cage Confirms He's Had Talks About Spider-Man Noir Live-Action Series

Nicolas Cage is in talks to take another swing at the Spider-Verse. The Leaving Las Vegas Oscar winner, who voiced a pulpy private eye version of Peter Parker in 2018's animated Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, has confirmed there have been "conversations" about reprising the role in Sony and Amazon's live-action Spider-Man Noir series. The project — which was first reported in February —hails from writer and executive producer Oren Uziel (2021's Mortal Kombat) and Spider-Verse producers Phil Lord, Christopher Miller, and Amy Pascal, and follows the black-and-white, morally ambiguous Spider-Man of the year 1933.

"I can say that we have been talking. It's no secret that I love the character," Cage told Collider. Cage described the noir wall-crawler as a "mash up of sorts," one modeled after Golden Age actors like Edward G. Robinson (Key Largo), James Cagney (The Public Enemy), and Humphrey Bogart (The Maltese Falcon).

"I can combine my favorite golden age performances — i.e. Robinson, Cagney, Bogart — with a character that is, I guess, widely considered [to be] Stan Lee's masterpiece," Cage said. "I see it as a kind of foray into a pop art mash up of, sort of, a [Jungian] Lichtenstein, mash up by way of Bogart and Cagney, but nothing's definitive yet. It's just conversation."

Variety, which first reported the news, described the live-action Spider-Man Noir series as follows: "The untitled series will follow an older, grizzled superhero in 1930s New York City. An individual with knowledge of the project says that the show will be set in its own universe and the main character will not be Peter Parker." 

The Cage-voiced Spider-Man Noir from Into the Spider-Verse was a moody 1930s version of Peter Parker. Created in 2009, the character's comic book counterpart — a scrappy Peter Parker known as "The Spider-Man" — was a black-clad, gun-toting vigilante who crusaded against corrupt politicians, crooked cops, and mobsters like Norman "The Goblin" Osborn during the Great Depression. 

The original Spider-Man Noir comic re-imagined Spider-Man's rogue's gallery as gangster types, including the Enforcers — Fancy Dan, Montana, and Ox — and the Goblin's carnie cronies like Kraven, a former animal trainer; the Vulture, an animalistic freak show cannibal; and the Chameleon, a criminal master of disguise. Spider-Man Noir has since appeared in Marvel's many Spider-Verse events, including the 2014 original, 2018's Spider-Geddon, and 2022's End of the Spider-Verse.