Nicolas Cage Says Passing on Green Goblin in Sam Raimi’s SPIDER-MAN Was the Right Call

Back when Sam Raimi was putting developing his Spider-Man movie in the early 2000s, he was looking to cast Nicolas Cage and the role of Norman Osborn, aka the Green Goblin.

It’s easy to imagine Cage bringing some wonderfully chaotic energy to that character, but the actor says he has zero regrets about walking away from it.

While attending the red carpet premiere for his upcoming Prime Video series Spider-Noir, Cage looked back on the opportunity to join Raimi’s superhero franchise and explained why he passed.

“For me, that was the right choice at the time,” he told PEOPLE. Cage went on to talk about why he enjoys moving between heroes and villains throughout his career.

According to the actor, both sides of that coin are “important parts of cinema,” but he also admitted he doesn’t want to “get trapped into doing one thing.”

Had Cage signed on as Green Goblin, there’s a good chance he would’ve stayed tied to that role for years. Norman Osborn remained a major part of Raimi’s trilogy, even appearing through hallucinations in later films, and the character eventually returned in the MCU with Spider-Man: No Way Home. Instead, Cage bounced across multiple comic book worlds in wildly different ways.

He played Ghost Rider, brought the unhinged vigilante Big Daddy to life in Kick-Ass, and later stepped into Marvel animation as Spider-Noir in the Spider-Verse movies. Now, he’s playing that character in live action.

Instead of suiting up as Green Goblin, Cage starred in Spike Jonze’s Adaptation. that same year, playing twin brothers Charlie and Donald Kaufman. The performance earned him another Oscar nomination and remains one of the best roles of his career.

Of course, the Green Goblin role ultimately went to Willem Dafoe, whose performance became one of the defining comic book movie villains of all time. It’s hard to argue with how that turned out.

Now Cage is finally getting his own live-action Spider-Man corner of the universe with Spider-Noir. The Prime Video series takes place in an alternate 1930s New York City and follows an aging private investigator with a superhero past.

Fans will be able to watch the series in either “Authentic Black & White” or “True Hue Full Color” presentation modes. Cage also revealed he leaned heavily into classic gangster and noir film influences while preparing for the role.

He said he tried to “channel” actors like “[James] Cagney, [Humphrey] Bogart, and Edward G. Robinson,” and then “collide” that energy with the world created by Stan Lee.

All eight episodes of Spider-Noir premiere on Amazon Prime Video on Wednesday, May 27, 2026.