Emerald City Video

Spider-Noir, the live-action series on Prime that will see Nicolas Cage reprising his role as Spider-Man Noir from Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, is coming to the small screen in May. A pair of new trailers dropped today, one in color and one in black-and-white, revealing that audiences will have the choice to watch the show in either format when it arrives on Prime.

Word that Spider-Noir would be presented in black-and-white had been celebrated by some fans, but presumably less so by executives who know it’s often hard to get modern audiences to watch a black-and-white show. This middle ground seems like a compromise, and even comes with the added bonus of labeling the black-and-white presentation as “authentic” and the color version as “True-Hue Full Color,” which sounds charmingly period-accurate.

You can see both versions of the trailer below. Feel free to state your preference in the comments.

While Spider-Noir isn’t the first (or second) time in recent memory that a major comic book project has been offered in black-and-white as a secondary option, it does mark the first time that doing so has had any real narrative weight in the world of the show.

Both Logan (2017) and Zack Snyder’s Justice League (2021) offered black-and-white options. In the case of Logan, the color came first, with the black-and-white version being available on home video (and a one-day “Logan: Noir” theatrical release). The “Justice is Gray” version of Zack Snyder’s Justice League released one week after the streaming release of the color version in 2021, with the filmmaker stating that he preferred the black-and-white version, screened at the 4:3 (IMAX) aspect ratio.

Per the official synopsis, “The story of Spider-Noir focuses on a gangland boss known as Silvermane, played by Brendan Gleeson, who has been the subject of repeated assassination attempts. Maybe that’s just one of the hazards of his business, or maybe there’s a broader scheme at play. Reilly starts to believe something’s amiss when an arsonist suspected of setting a blaze at Silvermane’s mansion reveals he can spark fire from his hands. Then Reilly runs afoul of hired muscle named Flint Marko, who invites him to go pound sand—a.k.a. engage in fisticuffs.”

All episodes of Spider-Noir will launch on MGM+’s linear broadcast channel on May 25, then globally on Prime Video on May 27.