The thing with the SPUMC – the Sony Pictures Universe of Marvel Characters – is that, while it may not always be pretty (Morbius, we’re looking at you), it’s nothing if not unpredictable. One minute you’re scratching your head as you Google a Z-lister comic book deep-cut called El Muerto because he’s getting a film with Bad Bunny; and then the next, you get hit with news that a live-action Spider-Man Noir series is in the works, and start to believe that miracles do exist after all. According to Variety (and confirmed on Twitter by producer Christopher Miller), the black-and-white, Nazi-fighting, egg-cream-drinking riff on everybody’s favourite Friendly Neighbourhood Spider-Man is set to star in his own series over at Amazon’s Prime Video streaming service.
Unconnected to the version of the character we met in Into The Spider-Verse (so no Nicolas Cage noir-ing it up for us in live-action, sadly), this new Spider-Man Noir project will be written and executive produced by The Lost City scribe Oren Uziel. The series follows an older, more grizzled version of the web slinger from 1930s New York, and will be produced by Spider-Verse overlords Phil Lord and Christopher Miller, and former Sony head Amy Pascal. The show joins Silk: Spider Society as the second Sony Spidey-adjacent project in the works at Amazon, and adds to a growing list of upcoming SPUMC projects that includes the Dakota Johnson Madame Web movie, Aaron Taylor-Johnson’s Kraven The Hunter, and an as-yet-untitled Venom threequel.
Despite mixed results for Sony’s Spiderverse thus far, with over 900 Marvel characters at the studio’s disposal, there remains massive potential for exciting stories to be told with the kinds of characters who wouldn’t otherwise fit into, say, an MCU. So, although we’ve been burned before (again, Morbius, we’re looking at you), we’re still very excited to see more web slinging shenanigans thwipping onto our screens in the near future. After all, as a wise (Spider-)Man once said, we don’t pick the ballroom – we just dance.