Charlie Cox: Daredevil Got 'Upgrade' With Move To Marvel Studios — Plus, What All Survived Born Again's 'Creative Overhaul'?
You'll see that the Man Without Fear is the same, but different — the recipient of "a little upgrade," Charlie Cox puts it — when Daredevil: Born Again finally debuts on Disney+.
Officially greenlit more than two-and-a-half years ago, the "TV MA"-rated revival-of-sorts wound up subject to a "creative overhaul" when, during a pause in production due to the summer 2023 writer and actor strikes, Marvel brass took a long look at what had been filmed thus far and decided a new direction was needed.
Original showrunners Matt Corman and Chris Ord (of Covert Affairs) were replaced with Dario Scardapane (a writer/EP on Netflix's Marvel's The Punisher); the directing team of Justin Benson and Aaron Moorhead took over behind the camera; and more of Cox's former co-stars (including Deborah Ann Woll and Elden Henson as Karen and Foggy) got invited to the new party.
Even so, much of the previous creative team's product remains intact to different degrees, Scardapane and executive producer Sana Amanat told TVLine on Sunday morning.
"The first [episode] and the last two are brand-spanking new," Scardapane, who penned the new series opener, explained. Meanwhile, the other six — directed by Michael Cuesta, Jeffrey Nachamanoff and David Boyd — received "some rejiggering, and [new] framing, and bookends and stuff," by way of newly filmed scenes. "But there are a couple that are 100% intact."
"Most of the episodes, we definitely added some things on," Amanat reiterated. "But otherwise, for the most part those six episodes existed" in large part as first conceived.
Moorhead and Benson, who directed Episodes 1, 8 and 9, played a key role in shaping the rejiggered Season 1, working in concert with Scardapane, Amanat and Marvel Studios exec Brad Winderbaum.
"Without taking anything away from their awesome work," Moorhead said (referring to the directors of what are now Episodes 2 through 7), "we were also executive producers, so we guided parts of the edit and all of that. However, we were not even on set for the other episodes, so we want to give those directors credit where it's due."
Now, some two years since filming on Daredevil: Born Again began, the well-scrutinized Marvel series is ready for its close-up, debuting Tuesday, March 4 with the first two episodes (of nine).
"It's been a helluva journey," Cox shared with TVLine on Sunday, while sitting with co-star Vincent D'Onofrio (who reprises his role as crime kingpin-turned-New York City mayoral candidate Wilson Fisk). "It's wild that we're here today, getting ready to release this show."
Having headlined three seasons of Netflix's Marvel's Daredevil alongside D'Onofrio, Cox spoke to how Born Again will honor the franchise's past while also resetting a bit for the present (and future; the other nine episodes greenlit in July 2022 will now serve as Season 2).
"It's an interesting tightrope to walk, really, because we want to make sure that we include the elements of the show that made it popular and successful in the first place [on Netflix], the things that we discovered in the original show that landed with the audience," the English actor noted. "At the same time, we're on Disney+ now, were calling it 'Season 1' even though the history is the same, and so we want to attract a new audience. We don't want to suggest that people need to go back and see three seasons in order to understand and follow this story. So that's an interesting jumping off place to achieve."
For those anticipating some version of "Marvel's Daredevil Season 4," Cox stated that "essentially the characters are the same" yet "changed, naturally, by the circumstances that they've been through, the experiences they've had."
The series itself is a bit changed by its new home, as a proper Marvel Studios production on Disney+, and now set in the actual MCU (versus being an "MCU-adjacent" series made by the now-defunct Marvel TV shingle).
"In a nutshell, being part of Marvel Studios now, there's a little upgrade to the show in terms of its look and its feel and its action," Cox smiled, "which is pretty cool."
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