Spider-Noir cancelled at Prime Video in Spider-Man's record week

Prime Video cancelled Spider-Noir after eight episodes on Friday 4 September. On that same Friday, Sony and Marvel Studios' Spider-Man: Brand New Day became the second film in history to reach $900 million at the domestic box office.

Variety broke the cancellation; TheWrap filed the same day saying it had learned independently that the streamer opted not to renew, and The Hollywood Reporter confirmed it separately. Deadline logged the $900m mark, noting the only other film to get there was Disney and Lucasfilm's 2015 Star Wars release. Nobody put the two stories in the same paragraph.

So let's. One Spider-Man property is the most valuable theatrical asset on the planet this year. Another could not earn a second streaming order.

The series was Nicolas Cage's first regular television role. It premiered on the linear MGM+ channel on 25 May and reached Prime Video the next day, in colour or black and white, at the viewer's choice. It drew a 92 per cent critics score and a 90 per cent audience score on Rotten Tomatoes, and 11 Emmy nominations, the most of any Prime Video programme this year. Two days after the cancellation, at the Creative Arts Emmys on Sunday 6 September, it won five: stunt coordination for comedy programming, sound editing, title design, special visual effects in a single episode, and cinematography for a series.

Cage's response, issued through his manager to TheWrap, was the most graceful exit line anyone has managed all year.

"For me, one season is perfect, having said what I wanted to say with this dangerous, innovative, pop-art Spider-Man. Onwards, upwards, inwards."

What Deadline actually reported about the money

Before the theory, the sourced reason. Deadline reported on 7 September that the show delivered "respectable but not outsized viewership coupled with the high cost for the lavish production, which filmed both color and black & white versions", and that since streamers judge renewals on cost against performance, "the ratio likely factored into the call". Deadline hedged it, and no trade has published a budget figure for the show. No Amazon or Sony executive has said anything on the record.

The only published metric is 2.6 billion viewing minutes across the first six weeks, per Nielsen, reported by TheWrap. Nobody has published a completion rate or a retention curve. Anyone telling you Amazon dumped the show because viewers stopped after episode three is guessing, and so is anyone claiming the reverse.

A point of accuracy the coverage keeps blurring: these are two pipelines, not one. Spider-Noir is Sony Pictures Television, adapted by Oren Uziel and co-showrun with Steve Lightfoot, and its lead is Ben Reilly, a Depression-era private investigator, not Peter Parker. Brand New Day is the Sony–Marvel Studios theatrical line, directed by Destin Daniel Cretton, with Tom Holland, Zendaya, Sadie Sink and Jon Bernthal. Same character family, different accounting.

Two series announced, two series gone

Which is where the pattern gets uncomfortable for Sony Pictures Television. Deadline first reported the Amazon–Sony Marvel pact in September 2020, and Variety reported the formal order in November 2022, beginning with Silk: Spider Society from The Walking Dead showrunner Angela Kang. THR reported on 16 May 2024 that Silk was dead at Amazon before it aired, two days after Amazon had pitched Cage's Noir to ad buyers at its upfront.

Two announced series. One killed pre-production, one cancelled after a season that won five craft Emmys. Sony holds rights to more than 900 Marvel characters attached to the Spider-Man franchise, and it has now demonstrated twice that a Prime Video and MGM+ berth guarantees nothing beyond a first order. That is not a strong position from which to sell the third show.

Here is the judgement, offered as analysis rather than reporting, because no outlet has drawn a causal line between the film and the series and neither will I: the Marvel name is no longer collateral at Amazon. Awards volume, near-unanimous reviews and a movie star in his television debut did not survive contact with a spreadsheet. Whatever the halo used to be worth on a renewal committee, it is worth less than the cost of shooting your show twice.

Both Variety and TheWrap report a second series from the pact is coming, Variety saying it is in development with an announcement expected soon, TheWrap attributing the "next chapter" to one person with knowledge. That announcement is the next thing to watch. Meanwhile the film stood at $923m domestic in week six after the Labor Day frame, per Deadline's actuals, roughly $13m short of The Force Awakens' unadjusted $936m all-time domestic record.