Gina Prince-Bythewood’s 2000 film “Love and Basketball” was a critically acclaimed success, produced by Spike Lee on a $20 million budget and marketed as a sports drama with appeal beyond a black demographic. Garnering Prince-Bythewood the Independent Spirit award for Best First Screenplay, it was – at the time – one of the largest scale and most high profile projects yet undertaken by a black woman director.
After five years working in TV as a writer on shows like A Different World and South Central, Prince-Bythewood wrote her first film, 2000’s Love & Basketball. Prince-Bythewood said, “With Love & Basketball, I played ball my whole life and did track at UCLA. So, I’m an athlete. And it was very important for me to get it right.” The film was developed at the Sundance Institute’s directing and writing lab.
More recently, Prince-Bythewood directed “The Secret Life of Bees” – produced by Will Smith and starring Dakota Fanning, Jennifer Hudson and Queen Latifah – to a $40 million worldwide gross. It was released by Fox Searchlight in October 2008, and debuted at the Toronto International Film Festival and Urbanworld Film Festival that same year. On the main character’s story, Prince-Bythewood noted that she “connected to Lily’s story. I was adopted. There is a line in the film, ‘there was a hole in me.’ I felt the same way…. Another line I connected with in the film was ‘I’m un-loveable.’ That is how I felt in my 20s. Now I have been able to come out of that. One of the ideas in the film is also how to love yourself.”
In 2014, Prince-Bythewood directed Beyond the Lights, starring Gugu Mbatha-Raw. Prince-Bythewood began work on the film in 2007, before work on 2008’s The Secret Life of Bees was completed, but struggled to find financing after her original production company, Sony, backed out after she insisted on casting Mbatha-Raw. The film premiered at the 2014 Toronto International Film Festival.
Gina Prince-Bythewood will be directing, as well as rewriting the script for the future comic book film (the script was originally in the hands of Christopher Yost, one of the writers for Thor: Ragnarok), titled Silver & Black. The Black Cat and Silver Sable movie will draw from the overall Spider-Man franchise and will be based on Marvel’s Spider-Man universe, so there will not be any overlap between this movie and the forthcoming Spider-Man: Homecoming movie dropping in July.
Silver & Black will tell the story of Silver Sable, a mercenary who hunts war criminals and has helped Spider-Man as well as faced off against him on multiple occasions, and Black Cat, a burglar who has periodically dated Spider-Man but ultimately ends up turning against him.
By writing and directing Silver & Black, Prince-Bythewood has become the first black woman to direct a superhero film. Prince-Bythewood also recently directed the Freeform network’s pilot for Marvel’s upcoming Cloak & Dagger. Prior to this, the director was known for films such as Love & Basketball, The Secret Life of Bees, and Beyond the Lights, as well as a recent series on Fox called Shots Fired.