This spring on the 2026 TV schedule, Marvel fans will meet another live-action incarnation of Spider-Man… sort of. Nicholas Cage is starring as the titular hero in the upcoming MGM+ series Spider-Noir, with this being his second go-around as Spider-Man Noir after voicing him in Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse. However, this time around, the character has the secret identity of Ben Reilly rather than Peter Parker, and the Spider-Noir producers explained the reasons why they went with this change.
Actually, that’s not the only name change this series is delivering, as it was revealed by Esquire that Ben Reilly’s masked persona will instead be The Spider, the same moniker of an unrelated pulp fiction character. As far as why it was necessary to tweak Nicholas Cage’s character in these ways, Spider-Noir developer and co-showrunner Oren Uziel explained that it stems from the noir genre itself, which explores the darker sides of humanity. As such, it was felt that Cage’s protagonist couldn’t be an optimist like Peter Parker, with Uziel saying:
Peter Parker feels very synonymous with a high school kid. Boyish. On his way up.
In the comics, Ben Reilly is a clone of Peter Parker who’s also known as Scarlet Spider and even on the Spider-Man mantle during the ‘90s. Barring some surprise, Frankenstein-like twist, that clone background is obviously not being retained for Spider-Noir. Instead, the show’s team felt that Ben Reilly could be more easily molded into the type of character they wanted to depict, with executive producer Phil Lord adding:
This character's very different from the Peter Parker from the movies. He's older and jaded, and not afraid to punch a guy in the face drunkenly. He already had his Chinatown disillusionment moment that happened years and years ago.
The Chinatown comparison is apt, as Nicholas Cage’s Ben Reilly is a down-on-his-luck private investigator in 1930s New York City who used to fight crime as The Spider. What caused him to retire from the vigilante life, as well as what brings him back to it, are still being kept secret. Overall though, Ben is described in the Esquire profile as a “guy whose hero complex has collapsed into a mid-life crisis.” As Oren Uziel put it:
Ben Reilly has already gone through the entire arc and has seen it all. He’s over it, and trying to move past it. But his past kind of keeps coming back to haunt him. It's just a different version that we haven't seen before.
In addition to these real life practical reasons for having Spider-Noir feature Ben Reilly instead of Peter Parker, Phil Lord also mentioned that the identity switch-up will also be addressed within the show itself:
I have to be coy about the reasons, because you'll find out. The reason he's named Ben Reilly is explained. We’ll leave it at that.
Given the time period and how Ben Reilly has seen things that have clearly impacted his mental health, I wonder if he was not only a World War I veteran, but also changed his identity from Peter Parker to Ben during or shortly after the war. Similar to how Mad Men’s Dick Whitman assumed the life of Don Draper when the real man was killed during the Korean War, perhaps Ben experienced something that forced him to cut ties from his old life. So technically that would still make him Peter, but Spider-Noir allows him to embark down a much different kind of path as Ben.
Whatever the secrets of his past hold, Ben Reilly will have a lot to deal with during Spider-Noir’s main story. That includes fighting villains like New York crime boss Silvermane, played by Brendan Gleeson, and his bodyguard Flint Marko, played by Jack Huston. Some of the more friendly faces in Ben’s life include Lamorne Morris’ Robbie Robertson and Karen Rodriguez’s Janet, while Li Jun Li’s Cat Hardy is filling the femme fatale role. In addition to being on MGM+, Spider-Noir will also be available to watch with a Prime Video subscription.
