‘Silver and Black’ Finally Starts Hiring Crew – Adds ‘Agent Carter’ VFX Supervisor

We’ve been a bit worried about the Spider-Man spinoff Silver and Black, mainly because there hadn’t been movement concerning pre-production since the release date announcement made by Sony.

The Sony comic book film would see the live-action debut of Silver Sable and the second on-screen version of Felicia Hardy but will debut her alter ego Black Cat. Rumors from SplashReport have suggested the film will center on multiple criminals and mercenaries from the Spider-Man universe.

Now, Omega Underground has learned that things are gearing up as the film directed by Gina Prince-Bythewood (Love and Basketball, Marvel’s Cloak and Dagger, Beyond The Lights) is now seeking crew members. Giving us the first real signs that pre-production has finally begun.

Their first hire is British visual effects supervisor Shenna Duggal. Sheena’s various VFX roles include working on projects such as The Hunger Games, Venom, Miss Bala, Marvel’s Agent Carter, Thor: The Dark World, Body of Lies, and Doctor Strange. 

Updated production dates haven’t been revealed to us but it’s expected to begin filming between February-March in Atlanta (Venom is said to wrap sometime in February) until an undisclosed date. It’s also set to shoot in another location to double for the rumored location of South America. However, we haven’t heard where this second locale might be and without full cast/crew, it’s hard to say if we’ll see delays like we did with Venom.

We suspect that casting should begin by the new year, if not sooner.

This is purely our own unsupported speculation but we’re thinking that Gina Rodriguez (Jane The Virgin, Annihilation) might be eyed for one of the two leads. Mainly, because she recently took on her first leading action role in Sony’s Miss Bala, a remake of the 2011 film directed by Catherine Hardwicke that has Gina playing an action heroine. If you’re going to have one of your main characters hiding out in South America/Triple Frontier as rumored, it might make sense to hire a Latina actress for that role.

Plus, she’s been training in Muay Thai fighting in Phuket, Thailand.

“Remember what you came here for.” – Ao and I training in the jungles of Thailand. #heaven @akathailand @kittipongwongmanee

A post shared by Gina Rodriguez (@hereisgina) on Dec 11, 2016 at 7:43pm PST

Another hint that Rodriguez could land a role is that the two Ginas not only follow each other on Instagram but she posted a profile on the director over the summer which name drops Silver and Black.

#MovementMondays Gina Prince-Bythewood is an American director and screenwriter known for the inspiring stories: Love and Basketball, The Secret Life of Bees, and Beyond the Lights. She was adopted when she was only 3 weeks old. Her adopted father is white and her adoptive mother is of Salvadorian and German descent. In an interview with Collide, she mentioned she sought out her birth mother recently, but it was not a positive experience. Her birth mother, who is Caucasian, was a teenager when she gave her up for adoption, and because her family knew her child would be black, they wanted the young girl to have an abortion. Gina and her husband, Reggie Rock Bythewood, recently created the limited TV series Shots Fired that aired on Fox. MTV News exclaimed “Shots Fired as an “autopsy” of Ferguson, how her experiences as a transracially adopted child and a young woman during the LA riots shaped her views on racial inequality, and the supreme importance of female swagger.” Prince-Bythewood will make history as the first woman of color to direct a superhero film, Marvel’s Silver & Black. This also means she is joining that rare, yet growing, list of women tapped to oversee such major superhero projects. On empowerment and fighting for her art, she has said, “I think one of the biggest influences on my behavior is the fact that I’ve been an athlete since I was five years old, and at a very high level. So my whole life has been, ‘Aggression is good, go for what you want, dive for the ball, go all out and leave nothing to chance.’ That’s my mentality and I really brought that to my film career.”

A post shared by Gina Rodriguez (@hereisgina) on Jun 5, 2017 at 9:30am PDT

Silver and Black is slated for release on February 8th, 2019. Just a week before Fox’s X-Men spinoff Gambit.

SOURCE: OMEGA UNDERGROUND