Prime Video’s annual upfront presentation on Monday gave us our first official look at Spider-Noir, the live-action Marvel series that’s bringing Nicolas Cage back to the superhero game — but not necessarily in the way you’d expect.
Set in a shadow-drenched version of 1930s New York, Spider-Noir follows a washed-up private eye (played by Cage) who used to be the city’s only superhero. The show fully leans into its retro setting, embracing the gritty textures of classic noir. Think trench coats, moral ambiguity, and maybe a punch or two thrown under a flickering streetlamp. It’s based on the cult-favorite Spider-Man Noir comics, and not only does this Marvel antihero story represent Cage’s first starring role in a live-action TV project — Prime Video is also doing something pretty unusual here in terms of the show’s release:
It’s making the series available both in black-and-white as well as color.
Specifically, that means viewers will get to choose how they experience Cage’s fedora-wearing webslinger — either in full color, or in stark noir tones that look like they were ripped from an old pulp magazine. It’s certainly a bold move that channels the show’s moody period aesthetic while also letting fans decide how stylized they want their superhero noir. And it takes to a whole new level the one-off experimentation that other shows have tried, like the way Netflix’s Black Mirror and Disney+’s WandaVision have given viewers black-and-white episodes here and there for creative effect.
In addition to Cage, meanwhile, the Spider-Noir cast includes New Girl’s Lamorne Morris as well as the legendary Brendan Gleeson. Behind the scenes, the creative team also reads like a red carpet of award-winners. Harry Bradbeer — known for his work on Fleabag and Killing Eve — is directing the first two episodes. The show is being run by Oren Uziel (The Lost City) and Steve Lightfoot (Marvel’s The Punisher), with some serious Spider-Verse firepower behind the scenes: Phil Lord, Christopher Miller, and Amy Pascal are all executive producers.
Spider-Noir will debut in 2026, first on MGM+ in the US, and then on Prime Video globally in more than 240 countries. No matter how you watch it, in black-and-white or in color, it’s shaping up to be a genre-bending experiment that brings something new to the superhero multiverse: Atmosphere, style, and maybe even a little jazz-age dread.
