Sony Names Director For Proposed ‘Silver and Black’

This news broke yesterday but we weren’t able to get it posted. Per the Hollywood Reporter, Sony has announced a title and director for a Black Cat and Silver Sable movie (unrelated to Spider-Man, like Venom) that the aim to put into production this fall. From the Hollywood Reporter:

Gina Prince-Bythewood, who wrote and directed The Secret Life of Bees, will helm Silver & Black, Sony’s Spider-Man offshoot that centers on the characters Silver Sable and the Black Cat.

Matt Tolmach and Amy Pascal are producing the project, which is planning for a fall start.

Chris Yost, who worked on the upcoming Marvel movie Thor: Ragnarok, is writing the most recent draft. Lisa Joy, co-creator of HBO’s Westworld, also worked on the script.

Silver Sable, created by Tom DeFalco and Ron Frenz in 1985, is a mercenary who runs a company that hunts war criminals. The character has been both antagonist and ally to Spider-Man.

Black Cat, an acrobatic cat burglar whose real name is Felicia Hardy, has a long and tangled romantic history with Spider-Man in the comics. The character was cut from scripts for the Sam Raimi Spider-Man trilogy, and a “Felicia Hardy” (played by Felicity Jones) briefly appeared in Amazing Spider-Man 2, though no Black Cat connection was ever made explicit.

Spider-Fans may remember some of Chris Yost’s recent work, the lamentable New Warriors relaunch, which featured Kaine. If Lisa Joy’s name was familiar, you may remember it from our coverage of the Sony email leaks. Those leaked emails talked about Joy’s role in what Sony had planned before Amazing Spider-Man 2’s lackluster performance brought their plans down like an avalanche hitting a glass house.

Sony has said they want to move this and Venom into production pretty quickly. We’ll see; many of us are dubious any of these will even get to filming. Hat tip to Mohammed Jaafar for posting it on the Crawlspace Facebook page yesterday!

–George Berryman!