Sony is really taking a beating with its Spider-Man universe of late. While the “Spider-Man” movies produced by Marvel are still gigantic mega-hits and the animated ‘Spider-Verse’ movies are critically acclaimed blockbusters (the first one won the Best Animated Feature Oscar), the rest of their SSMU (Sony’s Spider-Man Universe) woefully lags behind. “Morbius” was 2022’s superhero laughingstock, and “Madame Web” appears as if it will be 2024’s version (the film opened to a paltry $25.8 million this weekend and was a huge critical dud). “Venom” movies do (or did) well at the box office, but they’re often ridiculed, and it’s very dubious whether “Venom 3” or “Kraven The Hunter” will perform later this year. Then there’s the whole Spider-Man TV universe produced by Sony Pictures Television for MGM+ and Amazon Prime Video, which was announced ages ago and hasn’t really gone anywhere.
The Ankler has a new update, and they’re reporting that “Silk: Spider Society,” a spin-off series in development over at Prime Video for several years now, has scrapped its writer’s room.
According to the outlet, the show is headed for a development overhaul, and the entire writer’s room on the project was let go, minus its showrunner, Angela Kang, and one of the co-executive producers. Created in 2014, Silk is the alias of Cindy Moon, a Korean-American student bitten by the same radioactive spider that gave Peter Parker / Spider-Man his powers. “Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse” duo Phil Lord and Christopher Miller are co-executives on the project with Kai Wu and Jim Barnes.
Eagle-eyed fans will know the Cindy Moon character she was portrayed by Tiffany Espensen in the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) films “Spider-Man: Homecoming” (2017), “Avengers: Infinity War “(2018), and the extended cut of “Spider-Man: No Way Home” (2021), but they were all blink-and-you-miss-them appearances with little to no expectations of blossoming into the character full time.
One source close to the series told the Ankler that Silk was being refocused with a more “male-skewing audience in mind.”
There is some silver-lining good news, however. Apparently, Nicolas Cage is in “serious talks” to play the lead of the live-action “Spider-Man: Noir” character that’s also a Marvel-Sony co-production and has a green light from Amazon. “Spider-Man: Noir” which will be set in 1930s New York City, and sounds more or less like a live-action version of the same character that Cage voices in the current “Spider-Man: Into The Spider-Verse” franchise, which would no doubt delight fans.
Cage has been expressing a fondness for TV of late and a desire to star in a series in recent press, so perhaps “Spider-Man” noir could be a safe bet for the actor.