We already knew that Daredevil: Born Again was shaping up to be a very different show prior to the much-discussed creative overhaul, but it sounds like original showrunners Matt Corman and Chris Ord (and likely some studio higher-ups) were more determined to distance the Disney+ revival from its Netflix predecessor than we realized.
While speaking to Awards Radar, editor Stephanie Filo revealed that she and others who worked on the show were told not to watch Netflix's Daredevil.
“The original take on it was to lean away from the Netflix Daredevil show. They actually told us not to watch the Netflix show, because they didn’t want to affect how we were editing it. Once we restructured everything and figured out we would do a different take on it, we dove back into the Netflix side of things. We were able to use temp music from that Netflix series, and get back to that darker vibe.”
This tracks will what we've heard about Born Again before it was reworked, as the show was said to be much lighter in tone and more comedic. For example, the divisive bank heist episode with the eye-rolling Ms. Marvel nods was reportedly the only episode that wasn't changed at all prior to the Hollywood strikes.
Editor Cedric Nairn-Smith added that, once the series was overhauled, it was decided to lean into the central theme of how Matt Murdock and Wilson Fisk’s stories parallelled each other.
“Sometimes, we would iterate these episodes, and would be asked at times to intercut these scenes. We thought intercuts would not work because they weren’t intended to be intercut. However, once we started intercutting, we found out that there were common threads here. It felt like it was a happy accident that these inner cuts worked, and that you would find these connections. A lot of it was trial and error trying to find those threads, but some of it was also planned.”
Though the show certainly had its share of detractors, Daredevil: Born Again was a big hit with critics (87% on Rotten Tomatoes), and seemed to be embraced by the majority of fans as one of Marvel's better Disney+ efforts. We had also been led to believe that the Man Without Fear's long-awaited return did pretty good numbers for the streaming service, but this doesn't seem to be the case.
We recently learned that Daredevil: Born Again has become the first live-action Marvel Studios series not to make Nielsen's Top 10 Original Streaming Shows List. The only other Marvel streaming titles to fail to find their way onto the list were animated (What If...? Seasons 1 and 3, I Am Groot, and Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man).
Born Again is also the second live-action MCU Disney+ show not to make Nielsen's overall top 10 after Secret Invasion.
A somewhat surprising development, but we already know that Born Again will be back for at least one more season (filming is currently underway). A third is also planned, so it'll be interesting to see if viewership improves for the sophomore run.
In Marvel Television's Daredevil: Born Again, Matt Murdock (Charlie Cox), a blind lawyer with heightened abilities is fighting for justice through his bustling law firm, while former mob boss Wilson Fisk (Vincent D'Onofrio) pursues his own political endeavors in New York. When their past identities begin to emerge, both men find themselves on an inevitable collision course.
The show also stars Margarita Levieva, Deborah Ann Woll, Elden Henson, Zabryna Guevara, Nikki James, Genneya Walton, Arty Froushan, Clark Johnson, Michael Gandolfini, with Ayelet Zurer and Jon Bernthal. Dario Scardapane is on board as showrunner.
Episodes are directed by Justin Benson & Aaron Moorhead, Michael Cuesta, Jeffrey Nachmanoff, and David Boyd; and executive producers are Kevin Feige, Louis D’Esposito, Brad Winderbaum, Sana Amanat, Chris Gary, Dario Scardapane, Christopher Ord & Matthew Corman, and Justin Benson & Aaron Moorhead.