Interview With ‘Spider-Noir’ Showrunner Oren Uziel

Spider-Noir is the new show from Sony Pictures Television for MGM+ and Prime Video. Starring Nicolas Cage as Ben Reilly, a noir-detective by day and by night is the tragic super hero The Spider. Based on the Marvel Comics series “Spider-Man Noir”, it tells a twisted tale of suspense and superheroes in a post-World War I New York where Prohibition is rampant and violence is the language of the street. Although Nicolas Cage first got a crack with a character similar to this one in 2018’s Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse film, this is not a spin-off of that series or character—this is an original take and a different part of whatever Marvel multi-verse there is. There’s no baggage from that character to bring here.

The showrunner placed in charge of this limited, 8 episode series, is Oren Uziel. Uziel got his start in Hollywood co-writing a Mortal Kombat fan film and made the leap into professional production. Since then, he’s worked on everything from 22 Jump Street and The Cloverfield Paradox to his directorial debut, Shimmer Lake.

He was hired as the showrunner for Spider-Noir in 2023 and has been toiling on it since. We had the chance to talk to him about the project and how he approached crafting such a unique show that pays homage to so many classic films of the past while staying true to its comic book roots as well.

Bryan Young: Watching the show, it feels very steeped and knowledgeable in the noir genre and in comic books. There's The Lady from Shanghai, there's John Huston in it, there’s Raymond Chandler, there's as much Billy Wilder in there as much as there is Orson Welles. And I'm wondering how the team, or how you as the showrunner, approached blending that comic book sensibility with the structures of noir.

Oren Uziel: It was very noir forward right from the start. I think if you're making this show, if you’re taking the character Spider-Man Noir, and you're making a noir with this character, that’s just the world we're living in. And those are the storytelling tools you're using and that was dominant. So, in the writers' room and for me, it's all starting with those early noirs and working your way all the way forward.

I was always asking people to watch them. Go watch The Third Man. Go watch In a Lonely Place, go watch Double Indemnity. Go watch Lady from Shanghai and all the way up through L.A. Confidential. Please watch Miller's Crossing. Please watch Last Deduction.

The comic book stuff is enormously important to make this feel current and fresh and original and not just a rehash of old noirs that I love and the vast canon of Marvel characters that you can pull from are a way to sort of ask what is the archetypal character from noir that I'm trying to create a new version of, then go grab a Marvel character. And then put those characters into this world.

That to me was sort of the secret recipe here. Especially because it's a period piece. You're not trying to take that and put it into New York of right now and a young Peter Parker. This is an older character who's much more like Sam Spade.

And then the question always became, what if you made a Bogart movie where Bogart just happened to be Spider-Man?

And so when that character is faced with those predicaments that a private detective in an old noir might face, how is it going to be different if both he has powers or the people or the bad guy he's fighting against has powers?

BY: There’s this interesting thing in the writing where you do have those noir dilemmas, but it does feel like the comic books of the time. The comic books aren't the classics that I think a lot of modern audiences are in tune with seeing on screen right now. These are almost like older comics that you've gone to, right? More like the radio serials that kind of got put into comic form almost.

The early Marvel comics, like the Human Torch, the one before the Fantastic Four, that's the vibe I got.

Blending those beats, what was the challenge for you in making sure that you were still staying true to both of those different comic sensibilities?

OU: I think the challenge might be to make the show feel big in scope and scale in order to justify it being a big comic book series, that draws in a wide audience that's used to seeing that scale, while also keeping grounded and make all these characters just deeply human.

I'm most drawn to comic book stories, noirs, any story really, where the people are relatable and human no matter what the situation is. So, if you turn into sand and you're a sandman. OK, what's that like?

It's not in the show, but it is. You want to know what's it like cleaning up the sand in your house every day.

How is this experience? Does it hurt? Does it make you feel good? Does it make you feel bad? Is it drug-like? What is it? How is it affecting your love life? How is it affecting your job? Just the nuts and bolts of being someone dealing with that situation. That to me is what's interesting about comic books and superheroes.

BY: It felt the closest I've seen on screen to like Kurt Busiek and Alex Ross's Marvels comic, right? That on-the-ground, reporter feeling of like, “Well, I guess this is a thing now. This is this is real life. This is what we're dealing with."

OU: Yeah, that's exactly right.

BY: You've got the the detective character navigating through the cases and they have that cast of characters around them. In this, Ben Reilly has his secretary, he's got Robbie Robertson around him. What was the decision making process around putting this particular cast of characters in play for this story. How did you choose this group to put around Ben Reilly?

OU: It's one from the comic book world and one from the noir world.

I think in any story, especially in TV—not hat I can claim to be a TV expert, it's my first show—but you want to have a group of people that you love hang to around with.

For Ben Reilly, he's got two people in his life that still love hanging around him, even though he's not in the best place.

Robbie Robertson comes from the comics and has been a friend to the Spider character in all iterations. He's smart and capable, a good partner, and a trusted sort of source of wisdom and advice.

Janet, the secretary is like Effie Perine in The Maltese Falcon. She’s a character that we've seen before. She's there for him. She loves him. She's not in love with him. They're not lovers, but she's supportive in that same way. And it's a little bit of tough love when it's like, 'if you're not meeting my standards, shape up or ship out, buddy.' For me, it was putting him in a place where when you go to the office and the three of them are there, it’s always going to be a good time for the viewer and for them.

They're just giving each other a hard time with love.

BY: Talking about Cat Hardy, the character has such a great depth and she feels like a very classic archetype. She's got The Postman Always Rings Twice, Lynn Bracken (L.A. Confidential), Barbara Stanwyck in Double Indemnity sort of vibes to her. Maybe even Breathless Mahoney in Dick Tracy. Can you talk about the construction of her character, the femme fatale, the complicated character that you get in these noirs, but also evoking that Felicia Hardy vibe from the comics as well?

OU: It's the same kind of formula and you get to heighten her because of the comic book world you're using. But with a femme fatale, they're already pretty heightened, right? I think one difference is that this is a TV show instead of a movie, so you have a little more time so the character can develop more depth. And for her, it's like what's the modern version?

She's not just one thing. She's not just out to get the guy at all costs. What's the reason behind her?

What's really driving her?

Where's her humanity?

Lynn Bracken is an astute observation because she was essential to that triangle between her, Ben, and Flint. I talked about Russell Crowe's character a lot with Jack Huston.

And Casablanca a lot, where you're stuck in the middle and you're, you're trying to do the right thing and your goal is noble, but you might you might have to sacrifice some of your morals to achieve that that noble goal.

BY: Casablanca makes a lot of sense. She's going to Ben for the exit visas, essentially.

OU: Yes. Exactly. And she cares about Ben. But, you know, she cares about the exit visas more.

BY: I want to ask about Silvermane. There's this Harry Lime and Orson Welles in The Lady from Shanghai sort of all rolled into one with Brendan Gleeson. How did you build that character and what function did he serve as you brought him together from a writing perspective?

OU: Silvermane is such a powerful and imposing character in the comic books and we needed a figure like that to serve as the overlord to match Ben Reilly in terms of the fact that he's an unstoppable, immovable force.

Harry Lime is a great comp.

Then you get an actor like Brendan Gleeson, and you're going to work together to fill him out in a more three-dimensional way. Brendan came with a reference of an old governor from Ireland that he thought was a good comp. The kind of guy who comes from nothing and knows what it takes to get something into the hardest of circumstances and is able to justify a lot while still being a guy who thinks he's the hero of his own story.

In terms of the writing, it became interesting when you have Ben with superpowers, he's going to need to have super-powered foils and you need a heavy that can sit atop a structure that can control other people with superpowers, even though he himself doesn’t have them. So Silvermane, and an actor of Brendan Gleeson's stature, I think, became a nice foil for Ben.

He just needs to be big and heavy, even when he's just sitting at a table kind of eating pistachios.

BY: Being someone who obviously studies noir and noir writing and comics and comic writing, I'm wondering what advice about writing had you pulled from all your studying, whether it's from Billy Wilder, John Huston, or Raymond Chandler, James Elroy, or any of the great comic book writers?

OU: The thing I always think about, TV, film, comics, whatever it is, it's the old saying of having three great scenes and no bad ones. Just good scene work. It's always scene work and it's just pace, right?

Get in late, get out early.

Make every individual scene just as important as every episode is every season.

If you lose someone for a second, then you lose them.

I want to give everybody in the writing a reason to be excited about every scene. Every scene has a beginning and has a middle and has an end, then you're like, 'that was cool.' You just want as many, 'Oh, that was cool's piled up in a row.

Be rigorous with your scene work.

The entire first season of Spider-Noir is available now on Amazon Prime video.

You can learn more about Bryan Young at his website.