Nicolas Cage Was First ‘Spider-Man: Into The Spider-Verse’ Lead Cast

 

Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse director Bob Persichetti recently spoke about getting Nicolas Cage to secretly sign on as Spider-Man Noir.

Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse may not be conquering the box office like Aquaman is but it was certainly one of many beloved comic book films that hit the big screen in 2018. One of the film’s directors, Bob Persichetti, recently talked to Comicbook.com about casting one of the many fan-favorite characters, Nicolas Cage as Spider-Man Noir. This is what Persichetti had to say about the secretive casting.

“When looking at who we could approach to play the alternate dimension Spider characters, we thought about seminal actors that also might be comic book geeks. There were so many different casting meetings where a lot of options were put in front of us, but with Spider-Man Noir, we kept coming back to Nicolas Cage and wondering if he could or even would do it”.

While Cage is no stranger to comic book films, having played Johnny Blaze/Ghost Rider in the pair of films from 2007 and 2012 (and almost playing Superman in Tim Burton’s failed 1997 project Superman Lives).

Thankfully, Christina Steinberg, who produced Cage’s 2004 film National Treasure, was a producer on Spider-Verse and set up a pitch meeting between Cage and the film’s team:

“We showed him some artwork we had created for the film and pitched the character to him and he was immediately in. Noir was a character that spoke to him. And the black and white costume was the icing”.

And thus, history was made. But as Persichetti says:

“He was our first official lead cast because it felt so right. So we actually cast him over two years ago, but he couldn’t tell anyone.”

From the sounds of it, Cage went full throttle into the recording session, appropriately showing up to it wearing dark glasses:

“He never took them off, and never broke character. There was a palpable Humphrey Bogart energy that he brought into the room. It was really fun. We worked through his lines in three hours. He delivered awesome pulp magazine style line reads, and also comedy pulp style readings. He’s so good at it! Then we were done, he said his goodbyes, walked out of the room and that was it! No small talk, it was all business. He was just amazing.”

Have you seen Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse yet? What did you think of Nicholas Cage’s performance? Leave your thoughts in the comments!

Directed by Bob Persichetti, Peter Ramsey, and Rodney Rothman with a screenplay by Phil Lord, the film features the voices of Shameik Moore, Hailee Steinfeld, Mahershala Ali, Jake Johnson, Liev Schreiber, Brian Tyree Henry, Luna Lauren Velez and Lily Tomlin.

Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse is in theaters now!