Daredevile: Born Again, the Marvel Studios show that will be giving the superhero their first solo outing on Disney+, is being reworked after a portion of its first season has already been shot.
The Hollywood Reporter is stating that when production on the series paused in May due to first the now-resolved Writers Guild strike and now the still ongoing Screen Actors Guild strike, Marvel executives looked at the “(f)ewer than half of the series’ 18 episodes [that] had been shot” and come to the conclusion that “(t)he show wasn’t working.”
To rectify the issue, the Reporter story goes on to say that Marvel has released head writers Chris Ord and Matt Corman as well as any of the directors that were scheduled to oversee the balance of the episodes left to shoot. While the studio is currently hunting for new writers and directors to bring to salvage the series, the hope reportedly is to be able to keep some of what was shot for these initial episodes and combine it with new storyline material.
Daredevil: Born Again was announced at the 2022 San Diego ComicCon with a commitment to two seasons of eighteen episodes each. The show sees the return of Charlie Cox as blind lawyer Matt Murdock who fights crime in New York City’s Hell’s Kitchen district with the aid of certain superpowers that make up for his lack of sight. Cox originally played the character for three seasons on the Netflix and Marvel co-production Daredevil, alongside the also returning Vincent D’Onofrio as the crime boss Wilson Fisk, aka Kingpin. It has remained murky as to whether the characters’ appearances in the Disney+ series Hawkeye, She-Hulk: Attorney At Law and he upcoming Echo are in strict continuity with the Netflix series or not.
The Daredevil: Reborn shakeup seems indicative of some other, much larger issues going on with Marvel’s Disney+ series. The Hollywood Reporter piece delves into things in much greater detail, but the gist of it is this – Television is primarily a writer’s driven medium, with a showrunner and writer/producers overseeing much of the creative direction of a series. Film is more of a director’s medium. But, to quote an insider from the Reporter’s article, “Marvel is a Marvel-driven medium.” That Marvel is coming into the understanding that perhaps the way that they have approached their television output might not have been the best way to get results and are pivoting to the more traditional model of television production. It is a change of direction that certainly won’t affect some of the upcoming shows Marvel already has completed production on like Echo, but should impact some shows that have been announced but haven’t gone in front of the cameras yet like Wonder Man.
Daredevil: Reborn season one had been slated for a late 2024/early 2025 release, though it seems likely that it could premier later than that now.
