Hollywood has finally begun to hear fans' requests for a female-led superhero movie, and now the major studios are starting to seriously look in that direction. There's been talks of Warner Bros. having a Wonder Woman solo film in the works; Marvel Studios has been toying around with doing a Ms./Captain Marvel project, and there's even been some talk of a Mystique-fronted X-Men spin-off at 20th Century Fox. This past summer we saw Sony enter the game as well, announcing a female-led Amazing Spider-Man-related feature for 2017, but it's still not clear exactly where they're planning on going with it. Today, however, arrives some evidence suggesting a direction that they may wind up taking.
ComicBook.com has the scoop that Marvel Comics has registered a trademark for the female Spider-Man character Silk, suggesting that she may soon become a much more significant character on the page and, potentially in the future, on the big screen. The source suggests that the company's filing could hint at potentially "a new ongoing series featuring the character," even though she was only just introduced to the comics this past summer.
The character's origin story begins with the surprising revelation that Peter Parker wasn't the only victim of a radioactive spider bite the day that he was turned into Spider-Man. Instead, right after being finished with Peter the spider moved on to bite a young girl named Cindy Moon. The effects of this bite resulted in the girl getting her own set of powers that are similar to Spider-Man's, but slightly different. She's not as strong as the original wall-crawler, but she is faster, and she also has stronger Spidey Sense and can shoot organic webbing out of her fingertips:
While these recent developments with Silk are certainly interesting from a cinematic standpoint, we also can't ignore the fact that there are actually many female Spider-Man characters who are probably a lot of more worthy of their own solo superhero movie. It could wind up being a more anti-hero driven piece and focus on Black Cat. Or what about Silver Sable? Hell, what's going on with Gwen Stacy in the Edge of Spider-Verse comics could be a fascinating way to bring her back:
It's hard to say at this stage how many decisions have been firmly made about the female-led Amazing Spider-Man given that 2017 is still pretty far away, but Sony does have some big plans coming up soon with their big comic book franchise - namely The Sinister Six. The Drew Goddard-directed supervillain movie is currently on the release schedule for November 11, 2016, so we can probably expect production to get rolling sometime next summer. As always, stay tuned for updates, because we'll certainly be getting more of them soon.
