Twentieth Century Fox’s plans to attempt a new Daredevil comic book adaptation seems to be existing in a state of quantum flux these days – Some re[ports have it that the studio is working hard on the project, even to the point where they are negotiating with Marvel Studios to extend their rights to the character while others have been reporting that the studio is lukewarm on the film and would probably let the rights expire when the contract runs out in October.
One thing that is certain is that director Joe Carnahan was the most recent in a line of creative types to work on the project for the studio. Carnahan’s announced intent to tell the story of blind lawyer Matt Murdoch who defends the residents of New York City’s Hell’s Kitchen with the aid of radiation-enhanced senses as the superhero Daredevil in the style of a gritty 1970s crime drama like The French Connection certainly sounded promising.
But seems as if that promise might be going unfulfilled, as Carnahan took to his twitter feed last night to deliver some bad news.
Think my idea for a certain retro, red-suited, Serpico-styled superhero went up in smoke today kids.
— Joe Carnahan (@carnojoe) August 14, 2012
We shall see. Time is NOT on anyone’s side.
— Joe Carnahan (@carnojoe) August 14, 2012
While he doesn’t elaborate any further, I think we can read the tweet as confirmation that Fox is seriously leaning towards letting the film rights revert back to Marvel.
On the one hand, it is good news for those, like myself, who would like to see the hero interact with the other heroes in Marvel Studios’ shared Cinematic Universe. It’s also bad news for those, like myself, who were interested in seeing the vision Carnahan has for the character. Of course, I don’t think that there would be anything stopping Carnahan from heading over to Marvel to pitch his idea there.
And if Daredevil does revert to Marvel, based on their announced schedule of films, we probably won’t see a film featuring the character until at least late 2015 after Avengers 2. And that’s even if Marvel wants to exploit the character in feature films. There’s always the currently unnamed television project for ABC that Joss Whedon has been mentioned as helping to develop that could be a good fit for the character’s more street-level action.
Fox has until October 10 to get a Daredevil film in front of the cameras if they want to hang on the to the character’s film rights. The clock is ticking…
