Spider Society’ Show Dead at Amazon
The writing was basically on the wall for this one.
Amazon’s Marvel drama Silk: Spider Society — from producers Sony Pictures Television — is no longer moving forward at the streamer. Sources say Sony TV, which owns rights to a fraction of the Marvel universe that features more than 900 characters, plans to shop the drama series from former Walking Dead showrunner Angela Kang. Kang, who departed her pact with AMC for what sources say is an eight-figure deal with Amazon, remains housed at the streamer and will continue to develop projects for the company.
Reps for Amazon and Sony declined to comment.
The decision to scrap Silk comes a mere two days after Amazon, during its first in-person pitch to Madison Avenue ad buyers, announced a Sony-produced Marvel series Noir, starring Nicolas Cage.
Noir, like Silk, is poised to launch first on Amazon’s linear network, MGM+, before debuting on the streamer. Both shows are exec produced by Phil Lord, Chris Miller and Amy Pascal (Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse) and conceived as part of a larger suite of live-action shows based on the Sony Pictures universe of Marvel characters.
Plans for the interconnected Marvel slate of Sony shows remains in place, sources say, though only Noir will be part of that now unless another buyer for Silk emerges. It’s unclear if Sony could shop Silk to Disney, which owns the rest of the MCU and has found massive success with its shared universe of films and TV shows.
Silk, which was formally announced in November 2022, was poised to reopen its writers room in January of this year after hitting pause for the Writers Guild of America strike. The delayed room re-opening — which triggered a warning for Amazon and Sony from the WGA — came after the studio and streamer used the strike to evaluate work that had already been completed for Silk.
Silk was based on characters created by Dan Slott and Humberto Ramos. The series was inspired by the Marvel comics and follows Cindy Moon, a Korean-American woman bitten by the same spider that bit Peter Parker, as she escapes imprisonment and searches for her missing family on her way to becoming the superhero known as Silk. The show was to be one of the first to feature a Korean-American superhero at its center.
For their part, Lord and Miller moved their overall deal from Disney’s 20th Television to Sony in April 2019 and, as part of the nine-figure pact, were handed control of the studio’s Marvel slate. Sony retains rights to characters including Spider-Man (and all his villains, like Green Goblin); Venom (the Tim Hardy films); Morbius (i.e. the live-action feature with Jared Leto); and Black Cat and Silver Sable (both previously in development on the feature side). Select TV projects related to Sony’s Marvel characters will be produced in partnership with former Sony Pictures Entertainment co-chairman Pascal. Also possibly on the table: all the characters from Into the Spider-Verse.
