Wait, Nicolas Cage is playing a film noir version of Spider-Man?

Follow along with me for a bit.

A long time ago, Marvel Comics sold off the movie rights to various film studios to make some much-needed cash. The X-Men and the Fantastic Four were sold to 20th Century Fox, while Spider-Man was parceled off to Columbia Pictures / Sony, the Incredible Hulk found a new home at Universal, etc.

Over time, while Marvel and their new parent company Disney tried to gather up all the Marvel properties under one roof – licensing deals with Universal for the Hulk; buying 20th Century Fox outright for the X-Men and Fantastic Four – they haven’t had the same success in prying away Spider-Man from Sony.

Now Spider-Man HAS appeared in the Marvel Cinematic Universe through a few licensing deals, and some of the MCU’s characters have appeared in the Sony Marvel universe. But Sony has figured out that as long as they keep making Spider-Man movies, they can use all the associated Spider-Man characters – villains, heroes, ancillary figures – as their own movie properties. Sometimes this works beautifully (the Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse animated movies, the Venom trilogy), while other times it falls face first flat (someone should receive a prize if they can sit through Mobius, Madame Web and Kraven the Hunter in one triple feature).

That being said, let me introduce you to this iteration.

This is Nicolas Cage – playing Ben Reilly, a Spider-Man variant from the 1940’s – in a film-noir version of the crime fighter as Spider-Noir.

I kid you not. This show is airing later this year on Amazon Prime.

Hot damn. I’m getting some serious Sam Raimi / Darkman vibes here.

This looks freakin’ incredible. And the only way this could go one step farther and hit this one out of the park is if someone offered a black-and-white version of this TV series.

Nah, nobody does things like that. Not in this day and age —

Wait, they made TWO VERSIONS OF THE SHOW – one in black and white, the other in color?!?

And they have the king of over-acting, Nicolas Cage, as the protagonist??

SHUT UP AND TAKE MY PRIME SUBSCRIPTION, DAMN IT!!!!

Oh man, I can’t wait for this thing to air on (checks notes) May 27.

May 27? Nah, that’s too far away.

That’s not going to cure my Spider-Man fix.

At this point, I’d even settle for a summer stock performance of this Spider-Man iteration until the new Spider-Noir TV series premieres.