For the latest chapter in Sony’s Spider-Verse , Spider-Noir creator and co-showrunner Oren Uziel was already a fan of the noir genre and Spider-Man before he signed on. That meant he and actor-producer Nicolas Cage could spend more of their time, all the way back to writing the pilot, unpacking a single question: “What if we made a Bogart movie where Bogart just happened to be Spider-Man?”

“Every single day he’d come to set with a different reference: ‘This is Bogart from The Big Sleep , this is going to be Peter Lorre. This is going to be Edward G. Robinson,'” Uziel, whose own inspirations included Third Man , Double Indemnity , The Thin Man , His Girl Friday , L.A. Confidential, Miller’s Crossing and Casablanca, said of Cage’s commitment to shaping the character and world. “Beyond that, we didn’t want to make a version of Spider-Man that anyone had seen before.…