Marvel Television produced TV shows like Daredevil, The Punisher, Runaways, and Cloak & Dagger independently of Marvel Studios. However, when Disney+ launched, Netflix ended its partnership and Kevin Feige was given full control over everything.
One by one, series like the ones listed above were cancelled (who could possibly forget Helstrom, a show quietly released with barely any "Marvel" branding?). Fans weren't too upset given the hit-and-miss nature of the Jeph Loeb-led projects but saying goodbye to the world of the Defenders felt like a major loss.
Marvel Studios gave Charlie Cox a second chance at playing Matt Murdock with small roles in Spider-Man: No Way Home and She-Hulk: Attorney at Law. Daredevil: Born Again soon received the green light but was meant to be a reboot that largely moved on from Netflix's Daredevil.
"Season 3 had been well received and they had already gone to work on season 4," Cox tells Entertainment Weekly. "They'd pitched me a really cool arc for the season. My understanding was they were really heavy into breaking that season in the writers' room and then just overnight it went away."
"I never thought it would be a TV show again. I just assumed that we'd done that, so maybe it would be something else," the actor adds. "So I was shocked when they told me in 2022 that we were going to do a show, but I was also thrilled. It's such a great medium for this character. There is so much story left to tell. So the more time we have to do that, the better!"
Whatever Daredevil season 4 was going to be isn't what we'll see in Daredevil: Born Again. In fact, it won't even be what Marvel Studios originally had planned as Dario Scardapane was enlisted midway through production to creatively overhaul the series as its new showrunner.
"It had been conceived as more of a legal procedural, and we really brought it back towards an action-based New York crime story," Scardapane explains. "The real trick was to have the DNA of the old Netflix show, but then push it forward into something very new."
Cox adds, "The thing that we kept talking about was, this show has had the success that it’s had and has appealed to a very specific demographic because it's one of the few superhero shows that is so dark and sinister at times. Vincent and I both felt like if you lose that, you are at risk of losing the identity of our show."
"So we really pushed for the show to remain geared towards an older audience and not dumbed down to kind of capture a wider net of people. I think in some ways it's even darker than a lot of the stuff we've done in the past."
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 series 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 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.
Daredevil: Born Again premieres on Disney+ on March 4, 2025.