Sony Pictures is setting Gina Prince-Bythewood to direct Silver & Black, the film that is based on Silver Sable & Black Cat (aka Felicia Hardy) characters from Sony’s Marvel Universe revolving around its signature hero Spider-Man. Prince-Bythewood just directed the pilot for Marvel’s upcoming Cloak & Dagger series on Freeform and completed the first season of Shots Fired, the drama she created with husband Reggie Rock Bythewood. That season finale aired Wednesday on Fox. She will rewrite the Silver & Black script originated by Thor: The Dark World writer Christopher Yost. Matt Tolmach and Amy Pascal are producing, and Columbia Pictures execs Palak Patel and Eric Fineman are overseeing the production.
On the film side of the business, Prince-Bythewood has directed and written Beyond The Lights, Love & Basketball and The Secret Life of Bees, and she becomes the latest female filmmaker to be set to direct a superhero film, a trend that started with Patty Jenkins directing Wonder Woman, which Warner Bros/DC opens June 2. Sony separately this week dated two other films directed by women, the Michelle MacLaren-directed The Nightingale and the Elizabeth Banks-directed Charlie’s Angels, right after the studio set Catherine Hardwicke for the Gina Rodriguez-starrer Miss Bala. Barbie will also be directed by a woman, and the studio has Lucia Aniello directing Rough Night, its first R-rated comedy in two decades directed by a female.
