Emmy-nominated composers Kris Bowers and Michael Dean Parsons bring their Spidey score to life in a new live-to-picture performance
Credit: Aaron Epstein/Prime
NEED TO KNOW
- Emmy-nominated composers Kris Bowers and Michael Dean Parsons created a unique score blending orchestral, jazz and experimental sounds for Spider-Noir
- Their Spider-Noir score was performed live with a chamber orchestra and re-edited into a 14-minute performance film
- Spider-Noir, starring Nicolas Cage, has 11 Emmy nominations and is Prime Video’s most-nominated series this year
If there’s one thing Spider-Noir knows how to do, it’s cast a web.
The MGM+ and Prime Video series puts Nicolas Cage’s aging superhero in the shadowy world of classic film noir, complete with smoky rooms, jazz clubs, crooked cops and hard-boiled detective work. But beneath all that atmosphere is another thread holding the whole thing together: the music.
Now, Emmy-nominated composers Kris Bowers and Michael Dean Parsons are pulling that thread into the spotlight with a new 14-minute performance film of their Spider-Noir score. The pair perform their “Spider Suite” live to picture, giving fans an extended look at the music beyond the scenes it was originally written to accompany.
“Getting the call to score this show was thrilling and terrifying,” Bowers and Parsons tell PEOPLE. “We’ve both been obsessed with the classics of noir and superhero scores our whole lives, so the challenge was honoring both while making something that sounded like neither.”
The performance film was recorded at Sony’s FYC event, where Bowers and Parsons performed the suite with a full chamber orchestra, with Bowers on piano. The multi-camera footage was later re-edited and re-mixed into the finished performance film.
Bowers and Parsons’ score earned an Emmy nomination for Outstanding Music Composition for a Series (Original Dramatic Score) for the Spider-Noir episode “Step Into My Office.” The nomination is part of the series’ 11 overall Emmy nominations, making it Prime Video’s most-nominated series this year.
Based on Marvel’s Spider-Man Noir, Spider-Noir follows Ben Reilly, played by Cage, 62, as a down-on-his-luck private investigator in 1930s New York. Reilly is also the city’s lone superhero, a masked vigilante known as the Spider, whose past comes back to haunt him as he takes on a dangerous new case.
So Bowers and Parsons had to score two worlds at once: the gritty detective story and the larger-than-life superhero mythology.
“Luckily, Oren Uziel and the whole team encouraged us to have fun with it,” the composers say. That meant pairing “Big, sweeping orchestral melodies” with “strange, unexpected sounds and textures.”
Credit: Todd Williamson
Rather than simply recreating the sound of old-school detective movies or borrowing wholesale from decades of superhero scores, Bowers and Parsons built a musical language specifically for Spider-Noir. Their palette combines large-scale orchestral writing with jazz influences, electronic elements and custom sound design.
Some of those sounds are considerably stranger than the lush strings and brass one might expect from a 1930s-set superhero drama. The composers also experimented with distorted theremins, detuned penny whistles, chopped-up electric guitar and found percussion recorded from the streets of New York City, using those textures to give the score an off-kilter quality.
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The music also has to work across Spider-Noir’s distinctive visual presentation, which was designed to be experienced in both authentic black-and-white and full color. Rather than simply providing period atmosphere, the score acts as an emotional throughline, following Ben’s character and the twists in his story.
“We got to use our wildest imaginations and land on something we’d never heard before, while still shaping every note around the characters and where their story turns,” they say.
Bowers and Parsons already have some musical history together. The pair co-wrote the main title theme for Bridgerton, earning an Emmy nomination for their work, and their Spider-Noir collaboration takes that partnership in a darker and stranger direction.
Credit: Amy Taliaferro
Parsons’ credits include Pain Hustlers, The Wild Robot, King Richard, Queen Charlotte and Light & Magic. Bowers has scored projects including Bridgerton, When They See Us, King Richard, The Color Purple and The Wild Robot.
Bowers is also an Academy Award-winning filmmaker and composer. He won an Oscar for the documentary short The Last Repair Shop, which he co-directed with Ben Proudfoot, while his work on The Wild Robot was nominated for Best Original Score.
Parsons, meanwhile, is an Emmy-nominated composer whose work has been performed by the New York Philharmonic and New Jersey Symphony Orchestra, including at David Geffen Hall and Carnegie Hall.
Their Spider-Noir work has already earned recognition beyond the Emmy nomination, too. Bowers was named Best Music for Spider-Noir at the African American Film Critics Association’s 2026 TV Honors.
The full Spider-Noir soundtrack runs 34 tracks and more than an hour. Spider-Noir is streaming on Prime Video and MGM+. The eight-episode series premiered on MGM+ on May 25 and arrived globally on Prime Video on May 27.
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