Cut off from access to the greater portion of the world’s most beloved comic book characters—and having recently semi-sacrificed its one ringer, Spider-Man, to the gaping maw of the MCU—Sony continues to cast around for some comic book heroes of its own to adapt. Sometimes, that pursuit takes the studio in weird directions, like the news that it recently hired Mr. Twisted himself, Jared Leto, to play a take on minor Spidey villain Morbius The Living Vampire. But sometimes, it pays off in a much more delightful way.
Take for instance, the early but promising news from Deadline today, which reports that the studio has started development on a superhero movie based on Faith “Zephyr” Herbert, the breakout star of Valiant’s small-but-plucky comics line. We’ve written quite a bit about Faith over the last few years, and for a pretty good reason: She’s one of the best things going in comics at the moments, a bright, cheerful, kickass superhero with a nerdy sensibility and not much in the way of angst or brooding. (She’s also plus-sized, which, while being notable thanks to the ways comics otherwise tend to deal with depictions of the human body, is never treated as anything more pressing than any other minor biographical detail of her life.)
It’s still early days for the Faith film project, but Sony has already lined up a writer, with American Gods scripter Maria Melnik taking on the job. And honestly, it’s the most exciting thing we’ve heard from Sony’s superhero film department in a while (even if we’re mostly just excited for a project that doesn’t force us to explain who, like, Silver Sable is to our mom).