Amazon and Sony have been developing a live-action Silk: Spider Society series (that no one asked for), and now it’s learned big changes are happening as the show is getting an overhaul.
Have they finally learned their lesson?!
Who wants a woke Spider-Man?
The series features a woke version of the real Spider-Man.
Per reports about the official description, the series centers on Korean-American heroine Cindy Moon who is bitten by the same spider that bit Peter Parker, which gives her similar powers and she goes searching for her missing family.
Amazon-WGA scuffle
Silk: Spider Society was announced in November of 2022 and had convened a writers room just prior to the strikes. Former showrunner of The Walking Dead, Angela Kang, is the showrunner, with Spider-Verse‘s Phil Lord and Christopher Miller executive producing.
Well, the writers strike happened May 2023, so everything got put on hold. Following the strike ending in September, Amazon got into trouble with the Writers Guild as per the strike agreement, writers rooms are supposed to convene ASAP, but a bunch of Amazon projects didn’t including Silk: Spider Society.
So amid the Amazon-WGA scuffle, it was reported the Silk: Spider Society writers room was supposed to reconvene in January. Worth a mention is that in Deadline‘s report at the time the site noted, “According to sources, Amazon Studios brass have been evaluating the script material produced so far by the writing team.”
Writers fired
Now we get an update via The Ankler who says Amazon has scrapped the entire writers room but is still keeping Angela Kang on as showrunner along with one of the co-executive producers (Lord and Miller are also still onboard).
The report says that Silk: Spider Society is now being refocused with a more male-skewing audience in mind.
The site points to Amazon’s male-skewing series that have been big successes as a reason with Reacher, Jack Ryan and The Terminal, and we can also probably add the Invincible animated series and obviously The Boys.
What is also interesting is that The Ankler says the Silk: Spider Society writers room “had been a number of episodes deep into the season before the strike began,” but we see Amazon brass obviously didn’t like what they were seeing and put the kibosh on whatever they came up with and fired them all.
News comes with Sony’s Madame Web bombing
In what I am guessing is likely no coincidence, the news comes right when Sony’s Madame Web gets released and massively bombs, which features all-female superheroes.
The news also follows Marvel Studios’ The Marvels massively bombing featuring all female-superheroes.
We can also add that Wonder Woman 1984 was a massive bust along with Birds of Prey, that Batgirl was canceled, that She-Hulk, Ms. Marvel, and Hawkeye were all big busts on Disney+, and that Black Widow bombed in the MCU, etc. etc.
Comics, superheroes and the sort (Star Wars) are all dominated by a male audience and while true that they do have girl fans, it’s a small amount. It’s known the girls didn’t show up for both The Marvels and Madame Web. Typically what happens is the males get excited and then bring the females along with them (there’s nothing wrong with that, guys went to see Barbie). It’s not rocket science.
