The nine episode first season of the Marvel series Daredevil: Born Again is scheduled to premiere on Disney+ on March 4, 2025 – and during an interview with SFX magazine, showrunner Dario Scardapane, who previously worked on Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan and the Netflix series The Punisher, said this show will be even darker than the Netflix Daredevil series it follows, with less navel-gazing and more frequent big action sequences.
Although the initial plan was to rework some elements and make Daredevil: Born Again stand separate from the Netflix Daredevil series (despite sharing some cast members), the show underwent a creative overhaul when the writers and actors strikes shut down production in 2023. Now, this series is a direct follow-up to the Netflix series, picking up five years later. Scardapane was brought in to serve as showrunner during the overhaul, and the behind-the-scenes shake-up also led to Justin Benson and Aaron Moorhead, the directing team who were at the helm of multiple episodes of Moon Knight and Loki season 2, being hired as directors on the show. Matt Corman and Chris Ord were previously the head writers on the show, but they were let go.
The cast of the series includes Charlie Cox, Vincent D’Onofrio, Elden Henson, Deborah Ann Woll, Jon Bernthal, Wilson Bethel, and Ayelete Zurer, reprising the roles of Matt Murdock / Daredevil, Wilson Fisk / Kingpin, Murdock’s associates Foggy Nelson and Karen Page, Frank Castle / The Punisher, Benjamin “Dex” Poindexter / Bullseye, and Vanessa Marianna Fisk. Also in the cast are Margarita Levieva as Matt Murdock’s love interest Heather Glenn, Michael Gandolfini as a character named Daniel Blade, Genneya Walton as BB Urich, Jeremy Earl as Anti-Vigilante Task Force member Cole North, and Lou Taylor Pucci, taking on an unspecified role.
Speaking with SFX magazine, Scardapane said that the creative overhaul was necessary because, while the footage that had been shot had some really strong points, “it wasn’t feeling in line with what Daredevil had been established to be.” Cox added, “There was a U-turn after the strike, where we were headed in one direction which was interesting and valid. The argument was, if we’re coming back after all these years, we don’t want to just do exactly the same thing. Marvel looked at the episodes and knew it wasn’t quite working. We shot a whole new pilot and they reorganized what we had filmed to make it feel more like the show we had shot all those years previously. Given what a Herculean task that was, it’s very impressive what they achieved.” So now, the show ties back to the Netflix series. Scardapane said, “At the very end of the Netflix show, Foggy, Karen and Matt had a dream written out on the back of a napkin. We start with that dream. It’s not a dream that needs too much explanation; three good friends go into business together.“
The showrunner did admit that he had to re-think some things so his vision for the show could fit into the overall plan for the Marvel Cinematic Universe, which Daredevil has merged into through appearances in Spider-Man: No Way Home, She-Hulk: Attorney at Law, and Echo. “Marvel has a master plan, and what you’re doing causes ripple effects. I would pitch stuff very early and I would hear that they had other plans. I have plenty of leeway up until I hit the larger-scale plan for the MCU. So I try to ignore some stuff [from the wider universe]. We establish a very specific Daredevil, both in terms of his dilemma, down to the suit and where we’re picking him up in his life. You can say that Daredevil is canon in the MCU, those other events [in Spider-Man and She-Hulk] happened, but some of them we are not leaning into. His one-night stand with She-Hulk may be one of those things. They’ve moved Matt through other corners of the MCU, and now he’s back in his own story. I don’t want to give anything away, but you’re going to see a character [in our show] you never thought you would, but they get folded into the story in a manner that is organic and exists in our world. New York, in the current state of the MCU, has a lot of stuff going on.“
As for how Daredevil: Born Again compares to the Netflix show, Scardapane said, “There is more fun in the moments with these characters and a lot less navel-gazing than before. The earlier show, at its best, was fantastic. At its worst, it was two characters in a room talking about what a hero is. I felt that had been done. I’m not taking swipes. I just didn’t want to hear characters grousing about their lot in life. I wanted to see them doing things.” As popular as the Netflix Daredevil is, it could be criticized for being too slow and chatty. Having worked on The Punisher for the streamer, Scardapane knows very well why it was paced the way it was. “One of our edicts [at Netflix] was, ‘Longer scenes.’ You had these long five-page scenes of characters hashing it out in order to make space between these massive action sequences. The way stuff has evolved since then, we’re able to do big action sequences at a lot more pace. I really feel that Netflix’s Daredevil, which I know in my blood, was much more noir, and this show is more New York crime story. It has elements of The Sopranos and King of New York. There’s a feeling for those classic ’90s crime tales. It has a pace and a scope that, for a lot of reasons, Netflix wasn’t able to do. They were very dark, cinematically, not necessarily story-wise, although there were some dark elements. We’re much darker. This is as far as a Disney+ show has ever gone.“
What do you think of what showrunner Dario Scardapane had to say about Daredevil: Born Again? Are you looking forward to watching this show in March? Let us know by leaving a comment below.
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