Oh! I thought it was called Spider-Man Noir...huh. Where were you on that one, Google? Anyway, while the teaser image has been out for a couple weeks now, the series that’s set to be released across both MGM Plus and Prime Video has garnered some buzz with the knowledge that Nicolas Cage will be returning to the role following his standout performance in Spiderman: Into the Spider-Verse and is supposedly set to return in the threequel, Beyond the Spider-Verse. You know, that movie we were supposed to get over a year ago, and is officially confirmed to be released in a couple more. It’s fine. Movies take a while to make, and good movies sometimes take even longer…but that doesn’t mean we can’t be annoyed by it.
Besides a single teaser image and a trailer that mysteriously gets hit with copyright notices on any website that claims to have it—the overabundance of phony AI trailers and fan edits on YouTube don’t garner much confidence when you look it up there either—not much is known about the new series.
What we do know is Nicolas Cage is confirmed along with the rest of the cast, but that’s basically the gist. Actually, we also know it’ll be released in both black & white and in color, which…I don’t know. Doesn’t that feel like cheating? Or, like a lack of faith that people can give a different stylistic edge a chance? Not being able to tolerate black & white feels like the counterbalance of those weird people who need the subtitles on when they watch something on Netflix (seriously, who hurt you?). This leads to a bigger question with the upcoming series: What will the tone be like?
What made Nicolas Cage’s performance in the original film so entertaining was that he played it completely straight, bordering on almost being too serious, and that actually made him sillier. That, and his inability to understand the concept of color. He’s a ball of moody detective archetypes who’s blissfully unaware of his own ridiculousness and boasts about how much he likes to drink egg creams and fight nazis (that line is so great that if you’re really quiet, you can actually hear the sound of no one complaining that they were able to sneak that into a PG-rated movie). The potential drawback of this character being put in live-action is that his demeanor and way of speaking work for an animated character, but being placed in a more grounded setting could be conflicting. That is, if they stick with a similar portrayal to what he was like in the Spider-Verse movie, or go for more of a gritty noir story with Spider-Man at the center. Phil Lord and Christopher Miller are producing the project, but that doesn’t automatically make it a comedy.
Nicolas Cage has a talent for adding charisma to odd characters in otherwise normal environments. It's also not the first time he’s played a comic book character, we can’t forget the time he played Big Daddy in Kick Ass where he was simultaneously a nerdy dad and also responsible for a warehouse massacre that’s second only to the warehouse fight in Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice. His most recent outing in the genre was a missed opportunity in not returning to play Ghost Rider in Deadpool & Wolverine, due to unspecified reasons and a brief and heavily CG’d cameo in The Flash, where everyone had to explain-whisper to their friend who never watched An Evening with Kevin Smith why he was even in it. Ultimately, we’ll see how this series turns out when it’s released next year, but it’s safe to say that regardless of how they handle the character and what tone they go with, the Cage Man’s performance will likely be the best part.
Spider-Man: Beyond The Spider-Verse releases in theaters on June 4, 2027.