Nicolas Cage Wouldn’t Do TV—Until Breaking Bad, Says Spider-Noir Showrunner Oren Uziel
Breaking Bad became the unlikely catalyst for Nicolas Cage's return to serialized storytelling — and his leap into Spider-Noir.
Turns out Nicolas Cage did not jump into TV just because someone dangled a trench coat and a fedora. The short version: his kid put on Breaking Bad, and the next thing you know, we have Spider- Noir. It is a very Nic Cage way to greenlight his own TV debut, and honestly, fair.
How Breaking Bad tipped Cage into TV
Oren Uziel, the showrunner behind Spider-Noir, says getting Cage to commit to an eight-episode series was not a layup. Cage is a movie lifer, and long-form TV made him twitchy. So Uziel steered every early conversation toward classic cinema to keep it in Cage’s comfort zone: think Double Indemnity, Chinatown, Casablanca. That helped. But the real shove came from home.
'His son showed him the first season of Breaking Bad and he was like, okay, I think I can make a TV show... I recently thanked Vince Gilligan for helping me get Nic Cage.'
Uziel told that story to Discussing Film, and it is a delightful chain reaction: dad watches Walter White, dad says yes to Spider-Noir, show exists. Somewhere, Vince Gilligan just earned an assist he did not know he had.
So what is Spider-Noir?
The series drops you into Depression-era New York and follows Ben Reilly, an aging, retired private investigator who also happens to be a former Spider-Man. He gets pulled back into the mess by a case that chews through mobsters, monsters, and a very dangerous femme fatale. Cage leads a sharp ensemble: Lamorne Morris and Li Jun Li co-star, and Brendan Gleeson plays the big bad, Silvermane.
Release plan
All eight episodes premiered May 25, 2026 on MGM+ in one go. The global binge lands on Amazon Prime Video May 27, 2026. If you want a taste first, the final trailer rolled out May 19.
Two ways to watch: black-and-white or color
Here is the neat trick: Spider-Noir exists in two complete versions, and neither is an after-the-fact filter. Right after filming, the team processed both cuts in parallel. The black-and-white version leans into hard shadows and classic noir textures — think The Maltese Falcon vibes. The color pass is styled like a carefully colorized old movie, then juiced with pulpy comic-book energy. Cage has said the color option is there to meet younger viewers where they are; the hope is that some who start in color get curious and wander into the black-and-white — and maybe the classic noirs that inspired it.
The show was built to support both looks from the ground up, so pick your poison. Either way, if you enjoy Spider-Noir, you can quietly thank two people: Nic’s kid and Vince Gilligan.
I am in for the monochrome first, then a color rewatch. You?