Director teases Sony's Silver & Black might now end up 'on Disney+ as a limited series'

Silver & Black has gone through a lot since it was supposed to change everything for Sony a few years ago. The planned film starring Spider-Man associates Silver Sable and Black Cat, which was supposed to accompany Venom and Morbius as part of Sony's Marvel Universe, could never settle on a finalized script from Lindsey Beer and Geneva Robertson-Dworet, which bumped it off of Sony's release calendar back in 2018. Now it seems the film's future could be heading anywhere — even as a streaming show.

Let's get back to the Silver & Black history first. The planned team-up between the merc and burglar split when Sony announced further superhero plans later in 2018. “We believe Black Cat is enough of her own character with a great backstory and a canon of material to draw from to justify her own film,” said Sanford Panitch, president of Columbia Pictures and head of Sony's Marvelverse, at the time. That change put the film's helmer, Gina Prince-Bythewood, out of a job. Following the news that Venom: Let There Be Carnage has been delayed, Prince-Bythewood has given an update on the future of her contribution to this Spidey-adjacent canon.

Speaking to The Hollywood Reporter, the director said that her relationship to the troubled project was a much longer story than she could fully discuss: "That’s a book!" But in brief, she explained that the film was so deep back in development hell that it may no longer even be a film.

"Things are the status quo on my side. I really love that project, and I do hope it can still happen in some way. It keeps going through different thoughts," Prince-Bythewood said. "First, it was going to be the two of them, and then the decision was made to separate the two. Now, there’s a thought of 'Hey, maybe we put it on Disney+ as a limited series,' but I loved it more as a film with the two of them. So, my hope is that one day it can still happen."

Disney+? That doesn't seem to make much sense, considering Marvel has its own MCU shows coming to the streamer (including the Hawkeye show, The Falcon and the Winter Soldier, and more). Why would Disney, which has its Marvel plans fully figured out and in-house, snap up and distribute its weird cousin from a different company? Prince-Bythewood makes the point that she'd much rather stick to the original plan and make Silver & Black a single film — a female duo that could follow in Birds of Prey's footsteps, perhaps — but it really seems like Sony doesn't know what to do with the project.

If anything, the takeaway is only pessimistic: There are no good signs when the touted talk of the town is something so unrealistic.