Spider-Man movies, across the board, are fairly hit-or-miss. There’s at least one movie in all three live-action Spider-Man franchises that is considered that series’ dud, for instance, and there’s an argument to be made that there hasn’t been a widely celebrated and critically acclaimed Spider-Man movie that wasn’t in the Marvel Cinematic Universe since Spider-Man 2 in 2004, a whopping 22 years ago.
That’s not to say that the MCU Spider-Man movies are perfect, but Sony has undeniably had a lot more Spider-Man-related misses than it has had hits concerning live-action. This curse has been further exacerbated by Sony’s most recent Spider-Man-adjacent outings that have starred villains and side characters, but Amazon Prime Video’s Spider-Noir show is finally featuring a Spider-Man as its lead and seems like it could be a surprisingly great Sony/Marvel entry based on its recent trailer.
Sony’s Spider-Man Curse Can End With Spider-Noir
Nicolas Cage as Ben Reilly in a club in Spider-Noir
Spider-Noir’s astonishing true-hue and black-and-white visuals, as well as a predictably magnetic Nicolas Cage performance, are doing a lot of the show’s heavy lifting. The story and its lore are sure to be divisive, as Spider-Noir is swapping Peter Parker for Ben Reilly and isn’t related to Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, whose animated Noir Spider-Man (also played by Nicolas Cage, who evidently inspired this live-action spin-off) is apparently a separate iteration.
Nonetheless, it looks tremendously fun and has a high enough production budget for fans to salivate over a four-second clip of Spider-Man web-swinging. If it can lean into those strengths and be a halfway decent Spider-Man Noir adaptation, Sony will have made a considerable comeback in the realm of live-action Spider-Man.
Spider-Noir Shoulders a Brutal Weight
Nicolas Cage as Ben Reilly on the top of the roof in Spider-Noir
This is a lot of pressure to put on a spin-off TV show. That said, Sony’s Marvel projects have earned a great deal of skepticism due to how poorly received the likes of Morbius, the Venom trilogy, Madame Web, and Kraven the Hunter are.
Sony somehow struck non-MCU gold with Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, and spinning multiple related projects out of it—Spider-Noir, as well as Spider-Gwen and Spider-Punk movies reportedly in development—was a no-brainer. Of course, virtually nobody asked for the Spider-Man villain-centric movies that Sony was unapologetically committed to, and so it’s nothing short of a miracle that Spider-Noir exists and actually looks special.
Release Date
May 27, 2026
Network
MGM+
Showrunner
Oren Uziel, Steve Lightfoot
Lamorne Morris
Robbie Robertson
