Amazon Cancels Cage’s Spider-Noir Two Days Before Five Emmys

Prime Video cancelled Spider-Noir on September 4, two days before the Nicolas Cage series won five Creative Arts Emmys. The eight-episode run, his first regular TV role, will not return. Cage, 62, says one season is perfect.

Amazon is already moving another Sony Marvel show toward a series order. The partnership that produced this one is not done, even if Ben Reilly is.

Prime Video Ended Spider-Noir Two Days Before Five Emmys

MGM+ put all eight episodes on its linear channel on May 25. Prime Video dropped the full season worldwide on May 27, 100 days before the axe. The Television Academy later posted five Creative Arts Emmy Awards for a show that no longer had a future.

Night two of the Creative Arts ceremony fell on September 6 at the Peacock Theater in Los Angeles. Spider-Noir won title design, sound editing for a one-hour series, cinematography for a one-hour series, special visual effects in a single episode, and stunt coordination for comedy programming. Darran Tiernan took the camera prize for the pilot, Step Into My Office. The VFX trophy went to Nightmare on a Gurney. Sound editing went to the finale, The Man in the Mask.

THE WEEK THE TROPHIES ARRIVED LATE

1. May 25, 2026: MGM+ airs the full season in the United States.
2. May 27, 2026: Prime Video releases all eight episodes worldwide.
3. September 4, 2026: Prime Video opts out of a second season.
4. September 6, 2026: The series wins five craft Emmys, and Cage issues his statement.

Amazon MGM Studios and Prime Video collected 68 Emmy nominations across 16 titles this year, a total the company said was tied for the most in its history. Spider-Noir led that pile with 11 nominations, the most of any Prime Video series, ahead of Fallout’s 10. Six of those 11 did not convert. None of the wins were in a category that could have reversed a renewal math problem Prime Video had already settled.

A Fast Open and a Quiet Slide Off the Chart

Nielsen’s U.S. streaming panel put Spider-Noir at No. 2 among original series in its first week, with 851 million minutes viewed from May 25 through May 31. The next week it logged 739 million minutes and fell to fourth. By June 8 through 14 it was down to 410 million minutes and eighth place.

U.S. STREAMING MINUTES, NIELSEN

Those first three weeks add up to 2.0 billion minutes, which means the second three weeks of the six-week tally added only 0.6 billion. The six-week total of 2.6 billion minutes is a real opening. It is not the kind of hold Prime Video has gotten from Reacher, Off Campus, or Ride or Die, the recent in-house titles the show fell behind on the daily Top 10.

A binge drop front-loads the clock. Once the eight episodes were free to burn in a weekend, there was no Thursday appointment left to defend. The chart did what binge charts do after the curious have finished: it went quiet, and the quiet arrived while the invoices for a two-version shoot were still on the books.

Why Amazon Passed on a 92 Percent Show

Reviewers were not the problem. Rotten Tomatoes posted a 92 percent critics score and a 90 percent audience score. Metacritic landed at 72 from 28 critics. The series was built to look expensive, and it did. Each episode runs 42 to 49 minutes. Harry Bradbeer directed the first two. Oren Uziel and Steve Lightfoot showran a 1930s New York that had to play in two finishes at once.

Prime Video let viewers watch it in black-and-white or color, labels the company sold as Authentic Black & White and True-Hue Full Color. Shooting for both versions is the cost item people around the decision keep returning to. Amazon and Sony have not put a public number on the season, and they have not issued a public rationale for ending it.

WHAT WE KNOW

• The format: Every episode exists in a color cut and a black-and-white cut, a dual finish that raised the production bill above a standard first season.
• The chart: After a No. 2 launch, the series left Prime Video’s daily Top 10 faster than Reacher, Off Campus, and Ride or Die.
• The silence: Amazon and Sony have not published a reason for the non-renewal.

WHAT IS UNCONFIRMED

• The budget: Amazon has not released a season cost, so any circulating total remains a guess.
• Reshoots: Claims that the show was shot only in black-and-white before a color pass was added have not been confirmed by the studio.

Cost versus performance is how streamers describe these calls when they describe them at all. Spider-Noir had the reviews and the craft votes. It did not have the long tail of a cheaper hit, and it asked the company to pay twice for the same eight hours.

One Season Was Perfect, Cage Says

Cage played Ben Reilly, a worn private investigator in 1933 New York who had already retired as the city’s only superhero after a personal tragedy. He has described the mix as 70 percent Humphrey Bogart and 30 percent Bugs Bunny, and he has said he treated Reilly as a spider trying to cosplay as a human. In a June interview he talked about stealing the clip of Howard Hawks dialogue and the manner of Double Indemnity, then colliding that with Stan Lee’s hero until it felt like a Roy Lichtenstein painting.

For me, one season is perfect, having said what I wanted to say with this dangerous, innovative, pop-art Spider-Man. Onwards, upwards, inwards.

Nicolas Cage, star of Spider-Noir, in a written statement on September 6

That line matches what he said in May, when he was still selling the launch: whether a second season happened or not, the group had done what it set out to do, and the season works on its own. He is not leaving Prime Video. The streamer’s John Madden film, with Cage in the title role, is due November 18.

Lamorne Morris, as journalist Robbie Robertson, was the person on screen who seemed to understand the joke without winking it to death. Li Jun Li played nightclub singer Cat Hardy. Brendan Gleeson played Irish crime boss Silvermane. Karen Rodriguez, Abraham Popoola, and Jack Huston rounded out the regulars. Phil Lord, Christopher Miller, and Amy Pascal executive produced, the same trio tied to Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse. Cage and Pavlina Hatoupis were producers too. The credits were heavy. The order stopped at eight.

Silk Is Gone, and the Next Show Is Coming

Spider-Noir was the second series ordered, and the first to air, under a multi-title pact between Amazon MGM Studios and Sony Pictures Television. The pact is built on Sony’s slice of Marvel, more than 900 characters tied to Spider-Man, because Disney already has Peter Parker at the movies. The first show out of that deal never made it to a set.

THE SONY-AMAZON SCORECARD

• Silk: Spider Society: Ordered in November 2022 with Angela Kang as showrunner, then dropped in May 2024; Sony was left to shop it.
• Spider-Noir: Ordered in May 2024, filmed in Los Angeles from August 2024 to March 2025, aired in May 2026, cancelled on September 4.
• The unnamed follow-up: Still in development, with one project described as nearing a series order and its concept kept under wraps.

Every show in the deal is supposed to debut on MGM+ in the United States, then move to Prime Video worldwide. That window is a rights workaround, not a creative brief. Amazon wanted pictures of people loosely tied to Spider-Man. Sony wanted a buyer for characters it cannot put in a Marvel Studios movie. Spider-Noir proved the machine can finish a season. It did not prove the machine should keep paying for this particular one.

The comics original is a different man in a different city of the same decade. Marvel’s own explainer of the 2008 Spider-Man Noir comics still centers on Peter Parker of Earth-90214, a student who works for Ben Urich after Uncle Ben is killed. Uziel’s series changed the civilian name to Ben Reilly, a clone identity in other books, because Peter Parker sounded like a high-school kid. He has said it is the same character in a different universe, not a continuation of Cage’s animated turn.

The Last Antidote and a Renamed Office

Season 1 tells a complete case. Reilly spends the early episodes trying to stay a man in a fedora while Sandman, Tombstone, and a current-spitting crook named Dirk Leyden pull him back into the mask. A doctor who thinks she can cure the city’s mutated veterans instead makes them worse. Reilly steals a batch of antidote, then uses most of it on other people.

The finale, The Man in the Mask, is the specimen. Silvermane takes Reilly and forces him to produce the Spider. Robbie puts on the costume as a decoy and gets shocked for the trouble. Cat kills Silvermane. Reilly throws Leyden into a train, then hands Marko the last dose of the cure, which means he gives up his own shot at becoming fully human so Cat can leave with the man she actually wanted. Mayor Morris wins reelection. Robbie quits the Daily Bugle for the Harlem Herald. The office door is repainted Reilly and Ruiz Investigations.

A few threads hang. He is still the Spider. Janet is now a named partner. The city is still crooked. That is a closer, not a cliff. Amazon did not strand a mystery box. It stranded a one-season pop-art object that already cashed its ending, then watched the object win cameras, titles, stunts, sound, and a gurney full of effects two nights later.

The next Sony show will get the same MGM+ then Prime handoff, and it will be judged on the same ratio of cost to leftover viewers after the binge. Cage already said his piece and walked.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is Spider-Noir Part of the Marvel Cinematic Universe?

No. It sits in Sony’s Spider-Man Universe, an alternate 1930s New York that does not share a timeline with the Tom Holland films. The comics Noir is Peter Parker; this series made him Ben Reilly because the writers wanted a name that sounded like a tired adult, and they have said the show is not a sequel to the Spider-Verse cartoons.

Can You Still Watch Both the Color and Black-and-White Cuts?

Prime Video still carries both finishes, sold as Authentic Black & White and True-Hue Full Color. The MGM+ linear run on May 25 was the color cut only. Cage said he hoped the black-and-white option would push people toward actual 1930s crime pictures, which is a lot to ask of a toggle in a streaming menu.

Does the First Season End on a Cliffhanger?

The Silvermane plot is resolved, Marko is cured, and the office is renamed Reilly and Ruiz Investigations. Reilly stays superhuman because he gave away the last dose, and that is a door you could open later, but it is not a last-shot sting designed to force a pickup.

What Happened to Silk: Spider Society at Amazon?

Amazon ordered it in November 2022 with former Walking Dead showrunner Angela Kang, then dropped it in May 2024, two days after it publicly ordered the Cage series. Kang stayed at Amazon under her overall deal. Sony was expected to take Silk elsewhere; no new buyer has put it on the air.

Is Cage’s TV Spider the Same Man He Voiced in Into the Spider-Verse?

Uziel’s line is same character, different universe. The live-action Reilly is not picking up a plot thread from the animated films, even though Lord, Miller, and Pascal produced both and Cage’s voice is the obvious rhyme. The TV man is a World War I sergeant bitten in a German camp, not a cartoon gumshoe dropped into 2026.