Last Friday, the news broke that Amazon's Prime Video had decided to scrap Spider-Noir after one season. The series was expensive to produce and didn't make a huge impact with viewership, making it a relatively easy decision for the streamer.
The timing was suspect on Amazon's part, however, as the axe fell just two days before Spider-Noir won five awards at the 78th Primetime Creative Arts Emmys.
The reaction from fans and critics was also largely positive. Convincing Nicolas Cage to reprise his Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse role (well, a different, albeit similar, version) was also considered a huge win given that he's largely kept away from streaming.
Variety has since caught up with co-creator and showrunner Oren Uziel, who seems uncertain about Spider-Noir getting a second chance on a different platform. "We haven’t gotten there yet," he started. "I literally do not know the legalities and complications of that. But I expect that it’s a complicated proposition."
The odds of more Spider-Noir are slim, but Uziel had been mulling over ideas for Season 2 before being told it wouldn't happen. That included leaving the Big Apple and moving the action further down the timeline to place Ben Reilly in the midst of World War II.
"If I had my druthers, it would be probably another location," he shared. "There are so many L.A. noirs we could have dove into. There are European noirs we could have dove into. There are other places to go. You’re starting in 1933. Where is that heading? It’s heading toward just a most cataclysmic time — World War II. There was a lot of storytelling that could have happened there."
Spider-Noir was shot in Los Angeles, so the move would have been easy. Still, in the wake of its award wins, Uziel acknowledged, "I thought it was going to be disappointing timing at first. I didn’t want people to go to this big night on Sunday having to worry or think about something disappointing or sad. But the truth is, it became kind of a big celebration of what we accomplished together."
"We made a very closed-ended show. There’s a reason we were honoring these old noirs. The story begins when the client comes into the private detective’s office, and it ends when they solve the case," he continued. "So, it was nicely buttoned up. We told a story. It felt a little bit like a long movie. So, it’s bittersweet to not get right back to work with this cast and crew. But also, I have no regrets."
"We told a story, and it’s like, 'Do you want to invest in spending the money?' These things are expensive. Not nearly as expensive as the internet keeps claiming it was, by the way. People keep saying it was $400 million. I was like, 'Wow! That would be great.'"
After imploring fans to rewatch Spider-Noir, Uziel confirmed that he isn't involved with the next live-action Spider-Man-related TV series that Amazon is developing with Sony.
"They have people working on all those things," he said. "I would always love to advise and take part because I loved it. I know like what the challenges are and what the rewards can be."
Spider-Noir is a live-action series based on the Marvel comic Spider-Man Noir. It tells the story of Ben Reilly (Nicolas Cage), a seasoned, down-on-his-luck private investigator in 1930s New York, who is forced to grapple with his past life, following a deeply personal tragedy, as the city’s one and only superhero.
All episodes of Spider-Noir are now streaming on Prime Video.