Amazon has officially dropped the “Spider-Noir – Authentic Black & White” teaser trailer, and yes, they committed to the bit. It is black. It is white. Just Nicolas Cage brooding on rooftops and swinging through a 1930s New York skyline like a Depression-era gargoyle with unresolved trauma.
Take a look:
The series, titled Spider-Noir, is set in 1930s New York and follows an aging, down-on-his-luck private investigator forced to confront his former life as the city’s only masked hero. In other words, it is what happens when you give Spider-Man a trench coat, a nicotine habit, and the crushing weight of existential dread.
Originally, the character at the center of the show was meant to be Peter Parker but, due to licensing gymnastics that likely required several whiteboards and at least one screaming conference call between Marvel, Amazon, and Sony, the character was changed to Ben Reilly. Similarly, the title shifted from “Spider-Man Noir” to simply “Spider-Noir.” Because nothing says “corporate compromise” like surgically removing the most marketable two words in comics. But it still works for us.
As you can plainly see, the teaser leans hard into classic noir aesthetics- drenched in shadow and unapologetically monochrome. Cage moves like a man who has both fought crime and lost a custody battle with hope itself. The swinging sequences look surprisingly fluid for something deliberately styled like a 1930s detective film that discovered gravity.
Leading the charge is Nicolas Cage as Ben Reilly (as opposed to Peter Parker from the Spider-Verse movie), also known here simply as “The Spider.” Cage previously voiced the character in animated form, but this time he gets to glower in live-action, which is frankly what the invention of cameras was for.
The supporting cast includes Lamorne Morris (Winnie the Bish, aka “Brown Lightning”, from New Girl), Li Jun Li, Karen Rodriguez, Abraham Popoola, Jack Huston, and Brendan Gleeson, which is a lineup that screams “prestige drama” but also “someone is absolutely getting monologued at in the rain.”
The first season will run eight episodes and is set to debut on May 27th on Prime Video.
If this show sticks the landing, it could be one of the more daring superhero projects in years. Eight episodes of hard-boiled detective drama starring Nicolas Cage in full noir mode is either going to be fantastic television or the most expensive dramatic reading of a pulp novel ever filmed.
Either way, we are in. And when it drops this May, we are absolutely watching it in black and white.
