With over 900 different characters relating to the Spider-Man universe at its disposal, Sony is intent on carving out a niche in the superhero genre. And after the varying success of Venom, Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, and Morbius, it seems the company is turning its attention towards the small screen.
On Thursday, it was announced that Sony Pictures and Amazon had struck a deal to develop a whole new swath of live-action shows based on the Marvel characters owned by Sony. Sony Pictures Television is the studio cultivating the projects, while they’re set to premiere on MGM+ domestically and Amazon Prime globally.
We still don’t know much about Sony’s new Spider-Verse plans, but the studio’s first show could be a major step towards setting up the kind of Avengers-level crossover it’s been working toward for years.
The first show set to be released will be Silk: Spider Society, created by Angela Kang (showrunner of The Walking Dead) as well as Into the Spider-Verse producers Phil Lord and Christopher Miller. Kang will showrun and executive produce, alongside Lord, Miller, and Amy Pascal. This isn’t the first time that details surrounding a Silk project have hit the zeitgeist, as the character was rumored to be receiving a live-action movie back in 2018, and in 2020 reports first surfaced about a potential show.
Based on the character created by Dan Slott and Humberto Ramos back in 2014, Silk: Spider Society 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.” While it’s not known at the moment whether or not any other Sony-Marvel characters will appear in the series, the mention of Peter Parker in the officially released statement seems to confirm that, at the very least, Spider-Man does exist in the canon of the show.
In the eight years since Silk was introduced in the comics, Cindy Moon has had a long history of her own. After she was bitten by the spider, she was held in a research facility and trained for six years by Ezekiel Sims, an ally of Spider-Man’s who was trying to keep Cindy safe until she was able to control her abilities. After breaking free and encountering Peter Parker for the first time, Silk’s appearance triggered the arrival of the Inheritors on Earth-616, a cabal of interdimensional vampires who served as the primary antagonists of the original Spider-Verse storyline from 2014.
There is no confirmation at the moment that Spider-Society will be connected to Sony’s larger Spider-Man universe, but it would make a ton of sense if that were the case, considering the recent multiversal antics of Venom: Let There Be Carnage, Spider-Man: No Way Home, and even this year’s Morbius. There’s also the matter of Madame Web, an upcoming Sony-Marvel production titled after an iconic character from the comics whose encounters with Spider-Man always involve some kind of interdimensional shenanigans.
From the general direction of their previous and upcoming projects, it seems as if Sony’s not too keen to let go of the multiverse just yet, which could mean that introducing Silk to general audiences is one more puzzle piece in a larger plan. With Silk’s connection to the Inheritors and the original Spider-Verse event, there’s a very small possibility that Sony could be aiming for some kind of Avengers-level live-action multiverse crossover featuring Venom, Morbius, and potentially some version of Spider-Man, along with Silk and any other characters introduced as part of this Amazon Prime deal. While details are light right now, one thing is for certain: Sony’s Spider-Man Universe is a massive well that, at the moment, shows no signs of slowing down.
Silk: Spider Society does not yet have a release date.
