Sony’s Spider-Man spinoffs are progressing rather quickly. Last week came news that Ruben Fleischer would be directing Tom Hardy in a Venom spinoff. Now the studio has turned their attention to developing their Black Cat and Silver Sable spinoff.

There is confirmation that Love & Basketball-director Gina Prince-Bythewood will direct the film about two of Spidey’s female supporting heroes, which will now be called Silver and Black. More on the story below.

THR says while Spider-Man is now officially a part of the MCU, these spinoffs are a separate thing and will be part of a slate of films based on Spidey’s supporting cast. Thor: The Dark World scribe Chris Yost worked on the draft, with Westworld co-creator Lisa Joy doing some of the rewrites. Now that Prince-Bythewood is on board to direct, she too will take a crack the script.

For those who are not familiar with the two characters, Silver Sable is a mercenary who runs a company that is hired to hunt down war criminals. Black Cat aka Felicia Hardy is a well-known cat burglar who uses her acrobatic skills to escape from tight situations. She is also the sometimes love interest of Spider-Man and has fought alongside him from time to time.

While it will be interesting to see how Sony will pull this Spider-Man is not a part of these offshoot of films off, hiring a minority director is clearly a step in the right direction. Not only for a film with two female leads, but the industry as a whole. Sure it may have taken Marvel some time to get to that point – and even then it’s still not a solo effort – but more and more studios are discovering that female filmmakers have just as much talent as their male counterparts. But it’s not as though Marvel hasn’t been trying. They’ve approached acclaimed directors like Ava DuVernay to direct Black Panther and Patty Jenkins to direct Thor: The Dark World. Though you could argue that they dropped the ball on the latter considering that she directed Wonder Woman for DC, which has been getting very high praise. Hopefully there will come a time where we see female directors helming a male superhero film. It’s been a while since we’ve seen one.

Prince-Bythewood made her directorial debut with Love & Basketball – a deeply emotional film with a very strong female character arc. She was also behind the lens for Beyond the Lights and The Secret Life of Bees. This also won’t be her first superhero effort. She will be directing the pilot episode for Cloak and Dagger on Freeform.

[Source: THR]