Nicolas Cage is making his return to the Spider-Man franchise in 2026, but with a major catch. After having voiced a different Peter Parker as Spider-Man Noir in Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, his new upcoming live-action series will follow Cage’s titular hero as Marvel’s Ben Reilly.

In a new Esquire interview for the Spider-Noir TV show, the showrunner Oren Uziel, as well as producers Chris Lord and Phil Miller, finally broke their silence on some of the major changes to Cage’s leading Marvel hero, including the fact that this will be Ben Reilly instead of Peter Parker. Uziel began with sharing, “Peter Parker feels very synonymous with a high school kid. Boyish. On his way up.”

Lord added, “This character’s very different from the Peter Parker from the movies. He’s older and jaded, and not afraid to punch a guy in the face drunkenly.” Miller commented that “He already had his Chinatown disillusionment moment that happened years and years ago.”

However, the Marvel drama will actually tackle the identity change as a story plot, as Lord and Miller tease that there is a mystery behind the name. Lord elaborated, “I have to be coy about the reasons, because you’ll find out. The reason he’s named Ben Riley is explained,” as Miller concluded with, “We’ll leave it at that.”

While based on the Spider-Man Noir character, there is a reason why the upcoming superhero series is simply called Spider-Noir, as Ben won’t be using the entire moniker. Esquire confirmed that in this iteration, the web-slinger will be going by The Spider, set to be a callback to heroes like The Shadow and The Spirit from the era that the show is set in, and the noir storytelling focus.

In the comics lore, Spider-Man Noir is a Peter Parker variant from Earth-90214, while Ben Reilly, a.k.a. Scarlet Spider, is a clone of the Marvel icon. Uziel also elaborated on what their take on Ben will be like in the Spider-Noir show:

Oren Uziel: “Ben Reilly has already gone through the entire arc and has seen it all. He’s over it, and trying to move past it. But his past kind of keeps coming back to haunt him. It’s just a different version that we haven’t seen before.”

The choice not to use the Spider-Man name is also very likely related to the complicated rights, as live-action TV stories on Peter Parker have always been tricky, including in the Marvel Cinematic Universe timeline. That is why Tom Holland’s iteration hasn’t appeared on any of the Disney+ shows, as the Sony Pictures/Marvel Studios collaboration is only for theatrical releases.

Spider-Noir is scheduled to debut sometime in the spring, with episodes airing on MGM+ while streaming on Prime Video.