Hollywood legend Nicholas Cage has confirmed his is in talks with producers about taking on the role of Spider-Man Noir in a live-action adaptation.
Cage voiced Spider-Man Noir in Sony’s Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse in 2018 in a memorable cameo, but he recently confirmed in an interview with Collider that he has had “conversations” about taking on the role in the series.
In the interview, Cage professed his love for the character, liking how it provides a “mash-up of sorts” of golden-age performers such as James Cagney and Humphrey Bogart and one of Marvel’s most famous characters. “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,” Cage said. However, he emphasised that nothing was “definitive” yet.
What is more concrete is that Steve Lightfoot – known as a writer on The Punisher – was confirmed as being on board as showrunner for the series last December. The series is being developed by Chris Miller and Phil Lord, who produced the Spider-Verse films.
Spider-Man Noir is part of Marvel’s Noir universe (Earth-90214), which reinterprets familiar characters in a hardboiled/crime noir atmosphere – a genre first popularised by authors such as Raymond Chandler in the 1940s. Spider-Man Noir first appeared in comics in 2009 as part of the Marvel Noir line.
In this universe, set in the 1930s Great Depression era, Peter Parker/Spider-Man is a vigilante in New York, but, unlike his counterpart in the main Marvel continuity, this version often uses brutal and lethal force to dispense with his enemies – although he does struggle with the moral implications of this too. He does however still lose his uncle Ben.
In recent comic book appearances, Spider-Man Noir has more closely resembled his look in the Spider-Verse movie.
