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After voicing the character in Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse and the upcoming Spider-Man: Beyond the Spider-Verse, Academy Award winner Nicolas Cage has confirmed he’s in talks to play the Spider-Man Noir character in live-action.
While nothing is official, Cage detailed his passion for the character and the project while promoting his new film Arcardian at South by Southwest.
“Well, I can say that we have been talking. It’s no secret that I love the character,” Cage said, per Collider.
“I think the character provides another mash up of sorts. I can combine my favorite golden age performances, i.e. Robinson, Cagney, Bogart, with a character that is, I guess, widely considered [to be] Stan Lee’s masterpiece. I see it as a kind of foray into a pop art mash up of, sort of, a [Jungian] Lichtenstein, mash up by way of Bogart and Cagney, but nothing’s definitive yet. It’s just conversation.”
When Cage says “We have been talking,” he means himself and Prime Video, where the series has been in long-running development.
In late 2023, it was announced that The Punisher showrunner Steve Lightfoot had been tapped to helm the series, which will be set in 1930s New York City. The show is being written by Oren Uziel, whose previous credits include The Lost City, Mortal Combat, The Cloverfield Paradox, 22 Jump Street, and more.
If Cage did star on the Spider-Man: Noir series, it would be the first time that the Oscar winner has starred in a narrative TV series (Cage previously hosted the Netflix comedy docuseries History of Swear Words in 2021).
Cage not only almost played a superhero in the 90s but it was almost *the* superhero as he was cast as Clark in Tim Burton’s infamously unrealized Superman movie. While Cage did ultimately don the iconic cape in 2023’s The Flash, it was some sort of monstrous AI creation and not an actual scene that he acted in.
In addition to Arcadian, an action horror film directed by Ben Brewer, 2024 will also see Cage star in the horror film Longlegs, which has had some of the best movie marketing of the year so far. Neither film has an official release date at this time, however.