Nicolas Cage is fine with Spider-Noir getting cancelled, actually

But according to Cage himself, the cancellation was just what he was hoping for in his trenchcoated spider-heart. Talking to IGN at a red carpet event for his upcoming biopic Madden, Cage unequivocally doubled down on previous statements, explaining, “I meant it when I said what I said. It’s a perfect season. You never wanna get stuck repeating a character and wear out your welcome.” Cage, assessing his own work as the aging private eye and reluctant web-slinging hero, “Ben Riley is so idiosyncratic. I was doing something that was pretty high-risk, tightrope stuff. If you do that for season 2, season 3, you could really wear out your welcome.”

Cage is certainly no stranger to walking the high wire between boldly innovative and self-indulgently mannered in his career, and if his work as Reilly skewed more toward the dour than other recent Cage tours-de-force, it’s hard not to see where he’s coming from. (Apart from a couple of Ghost Riders and a pair of equally lucrative National Treasure movies, Cage has largely steered clear of repeating himself.) As the actor clarified, “So when they didn’t pick it up, I was like, ‘Whew, thank you!’ Because now I’m doing True Detective, and that’s only one season. It’s better that way, you know? I liked it when you would see Rock Hudson and McMillan and it’s one season. I didn’t wanna keep repeating it. I don’t like repeating myself. It’s perfect, and I love that character. I love that season, and it will always be there and always be fresh.” (For the young among us, Cage seems to be referring to the one-season TV detective series McMillan, although Hudson had played the same character for five years alongside Susan Saint James on McMillan & Wife.) 

For fans of Ben Reilly and his alter ego, there’s always the animated Spider-Verse, where Cage keeps popping up as Spider-Man Noir in his inimitable vocal capacity. As to other reasons why Cage may be glad to be done with Prime at least, the actor has been a vocal critic of the streamer’s pivot to AI in its programming, having refused to sign off his likeness as per the company’s demand and noting at the time, “I’m not part of their club. I didn’t sign the waiver to use AI on Spider-Noir. I’ll probably not work with that studio again, but that’s okay.”