For the latest chapter in Sony’s Spider-Verse, Spider-Noir creator and co-showrunner Oren Uziel was already a fan of the noir genre and Spider-Man before he signed on. That meant he and actor-producer Nicolas Cage could spend more of their time, all the way back to writing the pilot, unpacking a single question: “What if we made a Bogart movie where Bogart just happened to be Spider-Man?” 

“Every single day he’d come to set with a different reference: ‘This is Bogart from The Big Sleep, this is going to be Peter Lorre. This is going to be Edward G. Robinson,’” Uziel, whose own inspirations included Third Man, Double Indemnity, The Thin Man, His Girl Friday, L.A. Confidential, Miller’s Crossing and Casablanca, said of Cage’s commitment to shaping the character and world. “Beyond that, we didn’t want to make a version of Spider-Man that anyone had seen before. Nic was never going to do that.”

The first season, which drops on Prime Video on May 22, expands the story of Spider-Man Noir, who made his animated onscreen debut in 2018’s Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse. “They’re connected for sure. There’s inspiration being taken there,” Uziel said. “But when you’re making an eight-episode television series, you’re going to really expand it and broaden it. In live action, you get to see so much more of Nic’s performance and you can really fully realize New York in the ’30s.”

“We just were like, if this is the world, it’s the ‘30s and this is the guy, where does that take us?” added co-showrunner Steve Lightfoot. “It all starts and ends with the character, and we were just doing such a different version, who has wider powers, that everything led from that. He is older, he is wiser, he is maybe a little less excited to do it all.”

Originally dubbed Noir, the show was retitled to Spider-Noir ahead of its release to better encapsulate its blending of genres, said executive producer Dan Shear. “It’s really a merging of two genres. We’re telling a noir, but we’re also telling a Spider-Verse show and the title represents the intersection of those genres, which kind of creates a third new thing that we hadn’t seen before.”

For producers Phil Lord and Christopher Miller, the TV series needed not only to capture elements of the noir genre, but also, “it should be funny. Nic is a funny person. Spider-Man was always quippy. And some of our favorite noirs are really funny, but also emotional,” Miller explained. “As the show gets weirder, you’re letting Nic be Nic, and then also some of the crazy stuff they were doing in the surrealist horror noir space of the period seemed like a great opportunity.”

Cage’s co-stars saw the actor’s full-bodied commitment to delivering on the Spider-Noir universe helped elevate what actor Lucas Shaw described as a new kind of “badass adult” version of Spider-Man and one where Sandman actor Jack Huston said the heroes and villains do “become a bit of their own metaphor and that’s a beautiful thing.”

“Nic is unlike any other actor you’ve ever seen. He pulled from Bugs Bunny to play this character,” said Lamorne Morris, who portrays Robbie Robertson, a journalist and friend of Cage’s Reilly. “His whole thing is he is a spider trying to learn how to be a human. Whereas I think other characters are the reverse — they are humans playing the spider and I think it’s a completely unique take on it.” Added Brendan Gleeson, who portrays the series lead antagonist, mobster Silvermane: “It was just a joy to be working with Nic because you toss it across and it comes back with twice a spin on it.”

Cage not only stars but also serves as a producer, supporting the series through its “True Hue” color journey, headed up by colorist Pankaj Bajpai. “It was important to me to get the series made, and I knew there was a lot of trepidation about it being shot in black and white,” the actor and executive producer said on Wednesday’s carpet. “I could tell that some of the folks in the studio were nervous. So I said, ‘You don’t only have to shoot it in black and white; you can also get teenagers, who might be watching, by shooting in color with almost a colorized feel. And maybe that’ll make them interested in watching it in black and white.’”

It was a plan that the entire creative team got behind, said Miller, who told THR the team agreed they were “gonna shoot it with intention for black and white” and “not switch it at the last second” from the beginning. That single decision affected everything from performances to the music to cinematography.

Ahead of the series’ release, reports of budget disagreements between the producing team and Sony Pictures Television emerged, but Shear clarified any budgeting conversations were addressed early in the production process. “Before production, Amazon came to us and asked us if we could also make a color version of the show to go with it — two versions of the show for the audience. We accepted the challenge, worked out our plan for it and it was really seen as an efficient, effective production,” Shear said on the carpet. 

For Cage, releasing the latest chapter in Sony’s Spider-Verse in black and white wasn’t just about staying true to the period and style of his specific Spider-Man. “I designed my performance to fit within the black-and-white format, but my dream is that [young viewers] will see the black and white after they do the color, and they’re going to want to look at the old movies, all that great wealth of American cinema that we have, and all these great old actors, and what they were doing, what that style was like,” he explained. “I also say, it doesn’t matter if a 13-year-old doesn’t know who Humphrey Bogart is. It works.”

The show’s explicit decision to cross period with modernity may also work in its favor in terms of capturing a younger audience, regardless of which version they watch it in. “We wanted to be truthful to the period, but we never wanted it to feel like a pastiche,” said co-showrunner Steve Lightfoot. “We wanted it to be its own thing, and if you’re writing a show now, it’s hopefully going to speak to now. When you look back at those old movies, they’re very of their time, and we wanted to make sure that our show felt now even though it’s set in the past.”

As for the future of the series, Miller “would be happy to do more,” with Lord continuing, “We are television producers. We’re not gonna say no.”

“One of the magical things about any private detective story is, if you want another story, all it takes is another client to knock on that door, and then comes a new set of cases, a new set of problems and a new adventure to go one,” Uziel added. “So [it’s] conceived to be as many seasons as we want to go.”