Ludicrous reason why Amazon dumped Silk: Spider Society despite ordering Nicolas Cage-led Spider-Man Noir | Report | Web Series
Earlier this week, Amazon officially greenlit Noir, its Nicolas Cage-led live-action series based on the Marvel comic Spider-Man Noir. Produced by Sony Pictures Television and Amazon MGM Studios, this chapter of the expanding Spider-Verse for TV was confirmed just before Amazon’s upfront presentation on Tuesday. However, studio’s lips remained sealed when it came to discussing the future of another series that had presumably gone into development before Noir – Silk: Spider Society.
On May 16, Deadline reported Amazon’s silence on the matter was attributed to the studio dumping the storyline despite Silk being in the works for nearly five years. The media outlet’s reporter Nellie Andreeva claimed that Amazon’s ultimate decision of shelving the series was finalised merely few days ago.
Walking Dead alum Angela Kang was attached to the series as its primary showrunner. While her original series has been dusted by the studio, she’s still reportedly involved with Amazon MGM Studios for other projects. With Amazon finally dusting its hands off the show, Silk’s rights have reverted to Sony Pictures Television. The lead studio is reportedly in search of other buyers to book the show again, but for good this time.
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Silk: Spider Society mapped out a devastating history off-camera over the years. Its future has seemingly always laid uncertain. Here’s why the series was possibly shut down by Amazon.
Why Silk: Spider Society is no longer in development at Amazon
For the Angela Kang-led show, Sony Pictures TV initially brought in Lauren Moon in 2019 to adapt the comic for television. The series revolves around the titular character, originally Cindy Moon, a Korean-American woman, who shares the same spider bite as Peter Parker. Her origin story involves her escaping imprisonment, as she embarks on the search for her missing family, ultimately connecting her path to her superhero fate of becoming Silk.
Silk was supposedly the first series, set to launch the TV chapter for the Spider-Man franchise. While negotiations continued behind-the-scenes for the next two years, MGM+ and Prime Video finally ordered the Spider-Man spinoff in 2022, with Kang attached as the show’s writer, executive producer and showrunner.
Since then, Silk’s script has reportedly undergone three revisions. On top of that, Deadline stated that one of these three even “involved a request for Kang and her writing team to reconfigure the show so it is not hanging so heavily on the central character of Silk.”
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Alleged speculations surrounded the series earlier this year, as sources claimed that Amazon was focussed on marketing its content “with a more male-skweing audience in mind.” Deadline’s latest report now seemingly falls in line with those speculative dicussions as the re-writing process entailed shifting its focus away from the show’s very own titular character.
And it even seems like Kang eventually delivered a pitch worthy as per Amazon’s standards . However, as the studio seemingly got stuck with the decision on how to allocate its resources to these presumably pricey gigs, they ultimately went ahead with Cage’s Noir instead of Silk.
Moreover, with Sony recently completely missing the theatrical target with Madame Web, while MCU suffering at the box office with The Marvels’ relatively unpleasant earnings, Silk’s yet another female-led vision possibly shone red flags to the studio.
On the contrary, Prime Video’s well-balanced outlook with Gen V seems to have stuck a chord with the audience. The recent premiere of the Ella Purnell-led Fallout series also bagged a Season 2 renewal in April after amassing positive reviews from various corners.
