Sony, the keeper of the Spider-Man movie license from Marvel, may be drafting a Silver Sable script. “Who,” you say? Silver Sable is a fairly obscure Spider-Man character. She was introduced in AMAZING SPIDER-MAN [1963] #265 in Jun 1985, has had only sporadic guest appearances since then, but starred in her own series, SILVER SABLE AND THE WILD PACK [1992] for 35 issues from 1992-95. (You may remember the #1 issue of that series with the silver embossed cardstock cover from the depths of the 90’s gimmick cover craze. Today it’s a variant cover glut. Back then it was embossed, holofoil, hologram, and die-cut covers galore.)
As an antihero mercenary, she was cast opposite Spider-Man in moral juxtaposition, similar to the Punisher, but nowhere near his extreme. Her whole story–even for comic books–is a bit kooky, being from a made-up country, having unlimited monetary resources, and traipsing around the world on self-serving missions.
Sony has had dwindling success with their Spider-Man movie franchise, but pursuing a Silver Sable movie is pretty risky. Anything can break through the popularity barrier in superhero film (a la Deadpool), but reaching beyond the B-List fails to entice the general public. Instead of Silver Sable, a more promising venture would be a Black Cat stand-alone movie. She lives in a similar ethical gray area and has a complicated history with Spider-Man and Peter Parker, but without all the fantastic backstory silliness. Now, Sony’s potential Venom stand-alone movie? He’s A-List.
I’ll admit, however, in this new frontier of Marvel/Sony collaboration, if Marvel is crafting a Spider-Man Cinematic Universe for Sony, that–like some kind of Venn diagram–is self-contained, but overlaps in part with the Marvel Cinematic Universe, then all bets are off.
