Eleven Emmy nominations, a 92% critics score on Rotten Tomatoes and 2.6 billion viewing minutes were not enough. Prime Video has canceled Spider-Noir after a single eight-episode season, ending Nicolas Cage’s first regular television role a little over three months after it reached viewers. The cancellation was reported on September 4, 2026.
The show was an odd, expensive and genuinely distinctive thing, which is exactly what makes the decision sting. Cage played Ben Reilly, a seasoned, down-on-his-luck private investigator in 1930s New York forced to reckon with his past life following a deeply personal tragedy — the city’s one and only superhero, working a beat that looked more like Chandler than Marvel. Around him the series assembled Lamorne Morris, Li Jun Li, Karen Rodriguez, Abraham Popoola, Jack Huston and Brendan Gleeson.
The production’s signature flourish was technical as much as stylistic: every episode was made available in two versions, black-and-white and full color. Shooting and finishing a period superhero drama so that both grades hold up is not a filter toggle — lighting, costume and set design all have to read twice, and that double-duty craft is visible in where the awards attention landed.
The numbers behind the cancellation are worth laying out, because they are not the usual story of a flop:
- 11 Primetime Emmy nominations — the most of any Prime Video series in 2026, with nods including production design, makeup, visual effects and stunt work
- 2.6 billion viewing minutes across the first six weeks, per Nielsen
- 92% critics score on Rotten Tomatoes
- Eight episodes, premiering on MGM+ on May 25, 2026 and arriving on Prime Video on May 27
What those figures do not show is staying power. The series slipped off Prime Video’s daily Top 10 rankings relatively quickly, and respectable-but-not-outsized viewership is a hard argument to win against a lavish period production billed twice over in post. Craft nominations flatter a budget; they rarely justify one.
The creative bench was heavy too. Oren Uziel and Steve Lightfoot served as co-showrunners, developing the series alongside Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse architects Phil Lord, Christopher Miller and Amy Pascal. Spider-Noir was the second series greenlit under the Amazon MGM Studios and Sony deal to build shows around Sony’s Marvel characters — and the first of them to actually air.
That deal is not going away with the show. Sony Pictures Television and Amazon Studios have said they will keep collaborating on stories built from Marvel characters, and have already settled on what comes next, though the project has not been named publicly. No official explanation for the cancellation itself was offered.
For a series that spent eight episodes arguing that a superhero story could be shot like a 1930s crime picture and still work, going out with the most Emmy nominations on the platform is a strange kind of vindication. It is also the end of it.
