Even as reports surface about potential villains and supporting characters for Silver & Black, director Gina Prince-Bythewood has offered some of the first concrete details about Sony's Black Cat/Silver Sable film.
RELATED: Spider-Man: Homecoming in Same Universe As Venom, Silver & Black Films
“I wanted to tell the story of two damaged women who are at war with each other but need each other to survive,” she told Variety, comparing Silver & Black to buddy films like Thelma & Louise and Midnight Run.
Prince-Bythewood, who directed the Freeform television pilot for Marvel's Cloak & Dagger, said she delved into the Marvel Comics origins of Black Cat and Silver Sable to find what drew one to a life of crime and the other to a career as a killer for hire. In both cases, she discovered characters "haunted by the deaths of their parents."
RELATED: Spider-Man: Homecoming Character May Appear in Silver & Black
It's a darker, possibly even R-rated, approach that will make Silver & Black stand apart from films like Spider-Man: Homecoming, produced in partnership with Marvel Studios.
“Superhero movies have now transcended [the point] where they’re no longer superhero movies per se; they are essentially genre movies,” Columbia Pictures President Sanford Panitch said. “It’s not so much that characters have a cape and fly. In Silver & Black, these two women are modern and cool. … They may wear costumes, but [they’re] very real and very grounded.”