Spider-Noir premieres – Oren Uziel, making his first leap into showrunning, explains how Spider-Noir blends 1930s noir with Spider-Man’s world—centered on Nicolas Cage as Ben Reilly, a private investigator forced to face his “Spider” past.
On a New York morning. Oren Uziel sounds energized just thinking about the city again—excited enough to mention he hasn’t been back in a while. His voice shifts when the conversation turns to Spider-Noir, though. This series isn’t just another entry in the Spider-Man universe. It’s a live-action noir thriller set in the 1930s. landing streaming with MGM+ and Prime Video. and it asks a simple question: what happens when a man who’s walked away from the mask gets hunted back into it.
Developed by Oren Uziel, Spider-Noir is set up as a 1930s-set noir thriller starring Nicolas Cage as Ben Reilly. Reilly is a private investigator who has long abandoned his masked alter-ego. “The Spider.” Then superpowered criminals emerge in New York City. and Reilly has to confront the past he tried to leave behind—becoming a superhero once again.
For Uziel, it’s also a turning point in his own career. He describes Spider-Noir as his first TV show that he served on as a showrunner. “It was oddly smooth and incredibly challenging. ” he says. explaining that he made the pitch. wrote the pilot. started the room. and then began prep—without huge delays. but with the weight of a massive undertaking. He had a co-showrunner. which he says helped. and he points out that TV requires more episodes and “more infrastructure to deal with. ” even if he’s already spent years writing for features.
Uziel’s pitch for why he wanted the job leads back to obsession. He calls himself a “real junkie” for noir and says he loves Spider-Man. He also credits past collaboration with Phil Lord. Chris Miller. and Amy Pascal—producers on the project—with having made the leap feel possible. When they came to him with a Spider-Man story combined with noir. he was “pretty sold on it. ” imagining a live-action New York setting and a 1930s era that he describes as “deco kind of romantic.” For him. it wasn’t just a fit—it was the first TV opportunity he wanted to pursue with the passion required to do it right.
In the writing room. Uziel says the goal wasn’t to pull purely from comic-book material or purely from noir tradition. The show, he explains, is “noir forward,” shaped by both the setting and a particular kind of storytelling. The idea they kept circling is described like a what-if: “What if you made a [Humphrey] Bogart movie where Bogart just happened to be Spider-Man?” That collision gives the private detective story its tension—and also creates room to subvert what people expect. In Uziel’s telling. it’s easier to twist expectations when the detective has powers a normal private investigator wouldn’t.
He also frames Spider-Man differently here, not just as a new costume, but as a different person. In this series, he says, the Spider-Man story hadn’t been told before because the hero is “way older than we’ve ever seen him,” dealing with problems unlike those faced by a high school kid.
That tone depends heavily on Nicolas Cage’s presence. Uziel says Cage is older in the role—“he’s not a kid”—and describes him as incredibly prepared and a professional actor. He pushes back on any assumption that Cage would be “a larger life character” only. Instead, he characterizes Cage as sometimes quiet and thoughtful, reading the material, responding to it, and then getting off-book quickly. Uziel says that by the table read, Cage knew every script by heart.
The collaboration. Uziel adds. is also rooted in a shared refusal to do another Spider-Man iteration without making it their own. He says they thought a lot about what happened to Ben Reilly and how it changed him to become the Spider—asking what it means when “being the Spider is more of a challenge. just in terms of his humanity. ” and what it costs when he becomes “more Spider than man.”.
Uziel also describes how Cage leaned into references from noir’s past. According to Uziel, Cage came to set with daily inspirations—little bits like Bogart from The Big Sleep, James Cagney, Peter Lorre, and Edward G. Robinson—making the atmosphere feel “haunted by the heroes of noir’s past.”
When the conversation turns to today’s crowded superhero landscape, Uziel doesn’t treat superhero fatigue as a theory. He presents it like a real viewer mood. If people are tired of the standard superhero show. he says. Spider-Noir is “the show for you.” And if viewers aren’t even especially interested in superheroes. he argues they should still watch because the series is steeped in film history. cinema. and noir—built as a story about characters and love. loss. and friendship. “I’m confident to say that there’s no chance you’ve seen a superhero show like this,” he says.
Uziel also revisits his relationship with Phil Lord and Christopher Miller. noting that they’ve worked together before—on 22 Jump Street—and that repeating collaborations builds trust and shorthand. He says that mattered here because they “hatched the Spider-Verse movies. ” and because they brought Nicolas Cage on to do the first iteration of the character. Uziel says they know him and trust him enough that even when they were busy with Project Hail Mary Mary. it wasn’t an issue—they let him tell the story he wanted. stepping in when help was needed with his vision.
As for what comes next, Uziel doesn’t commit to a timeline, but he doesn’t sound like the end is near. He says there’s “definitely [an] opportunity” to take the story further and adds that they’ll wait and see what happens—though he’s excited to tell another story.
His workload outside Spider-Noir is already stacked. Uziel says he’s working on Murder, She Wrote for Universal with Jamie Lee Curtis, and he’s working on Puss in Boots 3 for DreamWorks.
He also addresses the show’s look, praising how visual it feels on screen. Uziel says the series was shot in LA and credits Darren Tiernan and Peter Deming—his two DPs—with being brilliant. He talks about pushing for something cinematic and large-scale, while making it visually inventive and interesting. He describes it as “a labor of love for everybody. ” adding that he’s glad viewers feel it as it unfolds.
Spider-Noir premieres on MGM+ and Prime Video on May 27.
Spider-Noir Oren Uziel Nicolas Cage Ben Reilly MGM+ Prime Video Spider-Man noir thriller streaming series May 27 premiere