Two trailers for the upcoming Spider-Noir televison series have been released, offering a first glimpse at Nicolas Cage‘s superhero private investigator in both black-and-white and full color.
The show, which is set to debut on MGM+ on May 25 before arriving on Prime Video on May 27, will give streaming viewers the choice whether to watch a color or monochrome version of the show.
The series, which also stars Lamorne Morris, Li Jun Li, Jack Huston and Karen Rodriguez, is produced by Sony Pictures Television and based on the Marvel comic series Spider-Man Noir.
The story follows Cage as private investigator Ben Reilly, who finds himself as a superhero in 1930s New York City after suffering a deeply personal tragedy.
It is being executive produced by Project Hail Mary directors Phil Lord and Chris Miller, who also worked on the animated Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse franchise.
At a Deadline event this weekend, the filmmakers revealed that Cage had decided to play the character as 70% Humphrey Bogart and 30% Bugs Bunny.
Miller explained: “One of the things that you don’t think about with Noir is that you’re like, ‘It’s super serious.’ But Bogart always had a twinkle in his eye and he was always doing something clever, and he and Bugs Bunny have more in common than you might think.”
Lord continued: “Yeah, there’s like a playfulness to it, right? And there’s a playfulness to Nic – I think that’s why he’s so iconic and there’s a playfulness to [showrunner] Oren [Uziel], who we worked with on the Jump Street movies. And so the idea is that the show is: it is a big character drama, it is an amazing mystery, it’s a big event television, but it’s also light on its feet.”
The series was developed as a stand-alone project after Cage initially voiced the character in the first Spider-Verse movie.
“When the idea of us making a live-action Spider show came up, this was the first idea that we had,” said Miller. “Because it felt like it was a contained universe. It was its own thing.”
Lord added: “The thing that I love about a noir is it’s about people in impossible situations, and the thing that Amy Pascal always taught us about Spider-Man is it’s not about flying around. It’s about what’s going on inside these guys and how challenged they are trying to live their lives as human beings and also live their lives as heroes at the same time.”