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Cinemablend
Cinemablend
Entertainment
Adam Holmes

Spider-Noir Producers Explain Why Nicholas Cage Is Playing Ben Reilly Instead Of Peter Parker

Ben Reilly Peter Parker Nicholas Cage Oren Uziel Nicolas Cage Phil Lord Esquire MGM
Nicolas Cage's The Spider crouched down in Spider-Noir.

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:

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