Amazon Passes on Silk: Spider Society and Greenlights Noir
The Spider-Verse giveth and the Spider-Verse taketh away. The streaming upfront presentations are happening this week, and today, Amazon had theirs, where they gave an update on a Spider-Man-connected TV show they’ve been developing while not mentioning another. (Neither of them has Spider-Man in it, of course, because we live in the worst era). They did mention Noir, a series based on Spider-Man Noir, a limited series Marvel comic – particularly the version of the character voiced by Nicolas Cage in the Spider-Verse movies. Cage will return for Noir, which will be a live-action series. On the other hand, there was no mention of Silk: Spider Society, a show based on Silk, a Korean-American woman bitten by the radioactive spider that turned Peter Parker into Spider-Man. That series, which was to air on Amazon Prime and MGM+, has been in development since 2020.
Why wasn’t Silk: Spider Society mentioned at the upfronts? According to Deadline, it’s because the show is not moving forward. Silk: Spider Society has had a tumultuous development, going through a couple of showrunners before Angela Kang of The Walking Dead took over and turning down several of Kang’s pitches, with which Amazon was not satisfied. Deadline says Amazon quite liked Kang’s most recent idea, but for budgetary issues, they decided to greenlight only one of the Spider series, and they chose Noir. The rights to Silk will now revert to Sony, who will shop Silk: Spider Society around to other streamers.
We’re probably going to hear a lot of moaning about how Amazon hates women in the next few days, or at least after Amazon announces Silk: Spider Society’s cancellation. But let’s be real; does anyone think this was going to be successful? Maybe if it was really good and positive word-of-mouth spread, but I don’t think anyone outside of hard-core Marvel Comics fans knows who Silk is, and most probably aren’t interested in finding out. Noir at least has a somewhat intriguing hook and Nicolas Cage in the lead role, but Silk is just another “What if Spider-Man were a girl?” concept. For some reason, enough people seem to be embracing Miles Morales, but you can only dilute a character so much before everyone stops caring. And while the Miles Morales movies are successful, neither of them has done as well as any of the ones with Peter Parker. And we all know what happened with Madame Web, which forced a bunch of Spider-Man lore into its… let’s be kind and call it a story. They’ve stretched the Spider-Verse concept as far as it’ll go, and Amazon was smart to realize that, at least to an extent.
Comments (1)
There was that fan film, based on Noir, that was posted on the boards by someone. It looked good. The question is, who has a bigger fanbase, Noir or Silk? It really should be as simple as that to find where the greater potential demand lies.
I really like the concept trailer, so it’s going to be kind of in that animation style of Morales, but Noir? Very good potential for great art and I would think that any of the writers are gonna have a field day writing Spiderman in the style of Raymond Chandler.
I have no problem with Cage doing voice acting for animation, in fact, I think it’s perfect, but I am skeptical of live action.
Didn’t actually watch all of it, but the animation in Spider-verse was good.