Sony’s animated Spider-Verse is crawling with countless Spider people. With a multiverse worth of webbed-superheroes, there are technically too many to keep track of. They just keep showing up! That didn’t seem like it was going to be a problem with Prime Video’s live-action Spider Noir series, though. We already met Nicolas Cage’s friendly neighborhood detective on the big screen. Right? Right? No. Not right. At least not completely. His live-action version of the character is different from the animated version we know. They come from different universes.
Spider-Noir showrunner Oren Uziel told Empire that the Spider-Verse is about to double up on its number of moody private investigators. “Same character, different universe,” said Uziel about Cage’s live-action Ben Reilly. “It’s a different flavour of that character, even though it’s still Nicolas’ voice.”
Why the difference? Phil Lord and Chris Miller’s Spider-Verse and what it means is why Uziel felt the show could do something that is connected yet independent from the animated films. “Once Phil and Chris introduced the idea of the multiverse, I think you’re allowed to take things and make them your own.”
This technically makes the Spider-Verse more complicated, as we now have one actor playing two different versions of the same character. But it’s not really all that much more confusing than keeping track of 800 different versions of Peter Parker. Plus, it will make watching Spider-Noir a lot simpler. We don’t have to worry about how it connects to the films. We can simply enjoy this version of Ben Reilly who lives in his own universe doing his own thing.
You know what else this means, right? Right? We might see Nicolas Cage’s Spider-Noir meet Cage’s other Spider-Noir. And really, what’s the point of even having an entire Spider-Verse if you can’t make something like that happen?