The long-awaited teaser trailer arrives tomorrow. Nicolas Cage will return to the role of Spider-Man Noir, only this time in live-action form. Here is a twist with this: he isn’t playing Peter Parker. The show’s producers say that their Spider-Man is an older, tired hero, which they feel doesn’t match the usual young Peter Parker character.
This is confusing, as this does not match what the animated movies tell us. The Spider-Man Noir character that Cage voices within those movies is actually a version of Peter Parker. Those same movies also had a version named Peter B. Parker, an older, worn-out version of the character.
So the TV show is doing its own thing; for this series, the Spider-Man character is going to be named Ben Reilly, another Spider character from within the comics. The live-action series is doing its own character and is splitting off from the version in the animated movies.
Brendan Gleeson will officially play the villain “Silvermane” in the series. With the series reportedly being “bigger than people would expect” with an “epic” fight between Ben Riley and Sandman. Jack Huston will play Sandman in the series.
The alter-ego for Ben Riley in the series will be called “The Spider” instead of Spider-Man. The name change is to fit with the nature of noir storytelling as well as other heroes of the era, like The Spirit and The Shadow.
Nicolas Cage has said he played his version of Spider-Man Noir as “70% Humphrey Bogart and 30% Bugs Bunny”. “His take on it was like ‘I’m a spider trying to cosplay as a human” says Phil Lord.
