Prime Video is closing in on a series order for a live-action Spider-Man show built on the Clone Saga, and it would star two clones of Peter Parker named Ben Reilly and Kaine Parker. Deadline reported the project on September 29th. It is not official yet, and nobody has been cast, there is no title and there is no date. But it arrives less than a month after Amazon canceled “Spider-Noir,” and the lead character of that show was also named Ben Reilly.
Sony Pictures Television is the studio, the same as on “Spider-Noir.” Kelvin Yu, who created “American Born Chinese” for Disney+, is writing it. Amy Pascal, Phil Lord and Christopher Miller are expected to executive produce, which is the same producing team “Spider-Noir” had. Reps for Amazon MGM Studios and Sony TV declined to comment. Warning beyond this point there are spoilers for the 1990s Clone Saga comics and the first season of “Spider-Noir.”
But it arrives less than a month after Amazon canceled “Spider-Noir,” and the lead character of that show was also named Ben Reilly.”
The plan for the release is a familiar one. If it gets the green light, the series would debut on MGM+ first and then stream on Prime Video. That is exactly how “Spider-Noir” rolled out in May. It premiered on MGM+ on May 25th and only reached Prime Video two days later, splitting its opening weekend across two Amazon services. Amazon is about to run the same play again with the same studio and the same producers.
This did not come out of nowhere. On September 11th, Lesley Goldberg of The Ankler reported that Sony and Amazon were weighing four new Spider-Man scripts after “Spider-Noir” was canceled, and that one or two of them were expected to move forward. The writers in the running included Yu, Alison Tatlock of “Better Call Saul” and “Pluribus,” “For All Mankind” creators Ben Nedivi and Matt Wolpert, and “WandaVision” writer Megan McDonnell. One project was said to be further along than the rest. Yu’s is the one that has now surfaced as nearing an order.
Deadline says two early options are on the table. In one, Ben and Kaine find out they are clones and then have to face other clones like them. In the other, the series changes their origins entirely and gives them new identities. Those are very different shows, because the first is the comics and the second uses the names and little else. Which one Amazon is ordering is the most important open question, and nobody has answered it yet.
Some history helps here, because the Clone Saga is not a small story. Ben Reilly first showed up as an unnamed clone in “The Amazing Spider-Man” #149 in October 1975, created by Gerry Conway and Ross Andru, and he seemed to die in that same issue. He came back in October 1994 for what fans call the second Clone Saga, and that run lasted until December 1996. Ben took the name Scarlet Spider, wearing a red bodysuit under a blue sleeveless hoodie with a big spider on the front.
Then Marvel made the call that made the story famous. Medical tests in the comics showed that Ben was the original Peter Parker and that the Peter readers had followed for twenty years was the clone. Ben became Spider-Man in January 1996. Readers revolted, and plenty of the creative staff hated it too. The saga was meant to wrap in under a year and was stretched out because it sold. It finally ended in “Spider-Man” #75 in December 1996. Ben died saving Peter, Norman Osborn was revealed as the man who faked the tests, and Peter was the real one after all.
Kaine is the darker half of the pair. He first appeared in “Web of Spider-Man” #119 in December 1994, created by Terry Kavanagh and Steven Butler. He was the Jackal’s first attempt at cloning Peter, and the process went wrong. His body was breaking down, his mind was unstable and he could see flashes of the future. He framed Peter for murder with their matching fingerprints. Years later he got his own “Scarlet Spider” series in 2012, moved to Houston and became a hero in his own right.
So the comic version of this show would be about two men who are both Peter Parker and neither of them. That is a strong premise for television. It also fits a pattern. “Spider-Noir” gave its hero the name Ben Reilly rather than Peter Parker, the name the Noir character carried in “Into the Spider-Verse.” This show would build around two men who share Peter’s face but not his name. Sony’s Spider-Man television keeps reaching past Peter, and a clone show is the cleanest way to do it.
Now look at “Spider-Noir” again, because it is the reason this story matters. In it, Ben Reilly (Nicolas Cage) is a broke private investigator in 1930s New York who used to be the city’s only costumed hero, in what was Cage’s first regular television role. Prime Video canceled it on Friday, September 4th. It then won five Emmys that weekend from eleven nominations, including cinematography, sound editing and visual effects. It scored 92 percent on Rotten Tomatoes from 112 critics. By most measures a network likes to brag about, it was a hit.
It still lost the only measure that pays. Reports at the time said it fell out of Prime Video’s daily Top 10 faster than other recent originals, and its budget was large. That is the context for this new order. Our read is that Amazon is not walking away from Spider-Man. It is walking away from an expensive period piece and trying something easier to explain. Two clones in the present day is an easier sell than a noir set ninety years ago.
Yu is a smart pick for that job. He created, executive produced and ran “American Born Chinese,” which premiered on Disney+ in May 2023 with Ben Wang, Michelle Yeoh and Ke Huy Quan. It mixed a teenage school story with Chinese gods fighting in the hallways, and it scored 94 percent on Rotten Tomatoes. Disney+ canceled it after one season. Yu also won an Emmy as a writer and producer on “Bob’s Burgers,” and many viewers know him as Brian on “Master of None.” A show about identity and two people who share a face is right in his lane.
There is one more small thread worth pulling. Destin Daniel Cretton directed the first and last episodes of “American Born Chinese,” and Cretton directed “Spider-Man: Brand New Day” this summer. That does not make this show part of the MCU, and nothing reported says it is. But the people around Sony’s Spider-Man are a smaller circle than the number of logos involved suggests.
So here is where it stands. The series is not ordered, and nothing about its story or cast is confirmed. What is solid is the studio, the writer, the producers and the two characters. If the order lands, Amazon will have canceled one Ben Reilly show and ordered another inside a few weeks. That is either a sign Amazon still believes in these characters, or a sign it only believed in an easier version of them.
What Do You Think? Should the Clone Saga show stick to the comics, or give Ben and Kaine new origins? Would you rather have had a second season of “Spider-Noir”? And which Spider-Man character should Sony build a show around next?
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