Sony must be reasonably sure Spider-Man: Homecoming will be a smash success, because it is going full throttle with spin-off films based on its Spider-Man license. Coming hot on the heels of the announcement that Tom Hardy would be playing Venom, we have news of a director being chosen for the Silver Sable/Black Cat film, Silver and Black.
The Hollywood Reporter is claiming that Love & Basketball director Gina Price-Bythewood has been hired to direct the spin-off, female centric film. Production is scheduled to begin this fall.
Well, maybe spin-off will turn out to be the wrong word. As with Venom, we have characters that are defined by their relationship to Spider-Man who won’t likely have a pre-existing relationship to the web-head before their film starts. Now, Silver Sable can stand alone from Spider-Man–she actually carried her own comic book series for a number of years–but most of Black Cat’s character development came from being the store-brand Catwoman to Spider-Man. Neither will likely appear in a Spider-Man film to establish a relationship with the character. Kind of hard to have a shared universe if none of the characters share screen time.
Price-Bythewood is no stranger to Spider-Man related Marvel properties. She is directing the pilot for the Freeform Cloak & Dagger TV series that is set to debut in 2018. Those characters first appeared in the pages of Spectacular Spider-Man and appeared in many adventures with him. Price-Bythewood’s last feature film was 2014’s Beyond the Lights, which she wrote and directed.
There is no word when Silver and Black will reach theaters and no movement on casting has been seen. However, if production is set to begin this fall, that information will be soon to come.
