Sony Developing New Spider-Man Spinoff Silk

Sony and Spider-Man: Homecoming producer Amy Pascal are set to develop a movie about relatively new Marvel Comics superhero Silk (aka Cindy Moon), according to Deadline.

First appearing in Amazing Spider-Man Vol. 3 #1 by Dan Slott and Humberto Ramos, Moon was bitten by the same radioactive spider that gave Peter Parker his powers (it bit him on the hand before falling onto her ankle and biting her). But while Peter went on to battle evil as everyone’s friendly neighborhood Spider-Man, Moon ended up being captured by a guy named Ezekiel Sims (who also has spider-powers, for reasons that are too convoluted to go into here) and stayed in an underground bunker for 13 years, only to emerge much to Parker’s surprise.

So, she’s basically Kimmy Schmidt but also Spider-Man. I’m sold! As far as her powers go, she’s not quite an exact copy of Spidey, as she can shoot webs out of her finger-tips, possesses an eidetic memory and has a much stronger Spidey-Sense (called Silk-Sense). The downside is that she’s not as strong, but makes up for her lack of strength with increased speed and agility.

Interestingly, Cindy Moon has already made her MCU debut in Spider-Man: Homecoming, where she was played by Tiffany Espensen and went on the trip to the Washington D.C. academic decathlon. It remains to be seen whether Sony and Marvel Studios had ambitions for her character in mind when they wrote her into Jon Watts’ pic, or if this was just a neat Easter Egg for fans who were paying attention, but we’re certainly intrigued.

One thing that’s also in question is whether Silk will be in the MCU or its own universe like Sony’s upcoming Venom. Given how tightly her origins and powers relate to Spider-Man, you’d think it’s a no-brainer that she’d be in the former, but then again, Venom’s origin is also inextricably webbed together with Peter Parker, and thus far there’s been no indication that Tom Holland’s web-slinger will appear alongside Tom Hardy this fall.

Regardless, Silk is clearly in the very early stages of development at the moment, so we don’t expect to hear anything more about it anytime soon. Once we get any further updates, though, we’ll be sure to let you know.