David Farnor | On 12, Oct 2023

Marvel is giving Daredevil: Born Again a significant creative reshuffle, as the comics giant undergoes a major overhaul on how it makes TV.

The Disney+ series, produced by Marvel Studios, will see Hell’s Kitchen’s favourite crime-fighting lawyer officially return to living rooms, several years after Netflix cancelled its Daredevil series after three seasons. That includes Charlie Cox returning as Matt Murdock, Vincent D’Onofrio as Wilson “Kingpin” Fisk and Jon Bernthal reportedly reprising his role of Frank “The Punisher” Castle.

The 18-episode series was written and exec-produced by Matt Corman and Chris Ord, with production beginning in March. Since then, though, the project has been on hold due to the WGA strike and SAG-AFTRA strike. With fewer than half of the episodes filmed before the shutdown, the pause has led Marvel to take the project in a new creative direction, with Ord and Corman departing the show – although they’ll stay on board as exec-producers.

Marvel’s hunt for replacement writers – and plans to keep only some parts of the filmed material, which is reportedly more of a legal procedural than the action-packed original series – marks a major change in how the company thinks about TV.

WIth more than 50 hours of TV released direct to Disney+ in the past few years, it has amassed a small screen Marvel universe, but done so with a feature film-style approach that saw it film entire seasons and then tried to fix any problems in post-production. After Jessica Gao, writer of She-Hulk: Attorney at Law, was sidelined on the show but came back in post-production to oversee its completion, Marvel is now pivoting towards a more traditional showrunner approach.

Brad Winderbaum, Marvel’s head of streaming, television and animation, told The Hollywood Reporter: “It’s a term we’ve not only grown comfortable with but also learned to embrace.”

With full-time execs specialising in TV and showrunners producing pilots and show bibles, Marvel is switching gears dramatically – whether it can do so in a way that will put Daredevil: Born Again back on track is yet to be seen.

D’Onofrio wrote on Twitter after the news broke: “We are going to bring forward the best series we can. One we can be proud of. Have some trust my friend, trust… Every cool project I’ve been involved with has evolved constantly during pre-production, production and post. It’s just reported on these days as if it’s big news. It’s not. It’s a bunch of creatives doing their best to get it right. It’s a constant in this business. I wouldn’t have it any other way. Frankly I’d be worried if we were settling for less.”

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