'Daredevil: Born Again' Resumes Production Retooled With Familiar Faces
Hell’s Kitchen got a heavenly overhaul over the summer, and now they’re ready to make it happen. It’s lawyering time.
Marvel Studios’s Daredevil: Born Again resumed production this week, filming for the first time in something like 8 months. Much of that time was spent heavily reevaluating the show’s quality and direction. Upon resumption of production the new vision can be executed, as everyone who’s part of it shows up. And as it turns out, it’s this new direction that pushes it toward being the Daredevil season 4 everyone expected it to be.
As one may recall, Born Again was in production, filming in New York when the studios wouldn’t agree to deals for their actors and writers, making moving forward impossible in that regard. With ample time, Marvel executives reviewed the footage and realized the overhaul was necessary. They brought in writer Dario Scardapane, who had worked on The Punisher, as well as Loki season 2 directing team Justin Benson and Aaron Moorhead, to right the ship. The retool transformed the show from a legal procedural to bring back the grit and violence of the original series, reinforcing the focus on street-level heroics and deemphasizing visual effects that would make it more expensive. The series has also brought back Philip Silvera, who was stunt and fight coordinator for the original Netflix run, to be stunt coordinator and second unit director here.
But that’s not all. Foggy and Karen are officially back. The original incarnation of Born Again had probably had all sorts of reasons why Matt Murdock, played by Charlie Cox once again, was no longer working with them or part of their lives, life goes on after all, but that is no longer the case. This retool has brought Elden Henson and Deborah Ann Woll back as their beloved characters and they’ve already been seen filming. It’s also being reported that Wilson Bethel will be reprising his role as Benjamin Poindexter aka Bullseye for three episodes. Reportedly that’s how many Woll has gotten as well. They join fellow returnees Vincent D’Onofrio as Kingpin Wilson Fisk and Jon Bernthal as Punisher Frank Castle.
With the creative overhaul, it’s unknown how much of the known cast members Margarita Levieva, Michael Gandolfini, Sandrine Holt, Nikki M. James, Clark Johnson, Genneya Walton, Arty Froushan, and Zabryna Guevara will actually make it into this version of the show. Its ambitious 18-episode order most certainly did not, especially when less than nine were made when the pencils went down with an unannounced amount of surviving scenes. From what’s been told, it’s not going to be as low as the six episodes Ms. Marvel, Moon Knight, and both seasons of Loki got, though certainly close to the latter’s combined total, since it’s described as “more in line with the original Netflix series model”. Back then of course, Daredevil had three 13-episode seasons, a long-standing standard season length that matched with network TV and even cable before 10-episode seasons crept in. So it will still be substantial.
The recently released Echo series featured Cox and D’Onofrio as their characters in very disparate capacities. It ended with a mid-credits scene setting up crime boss Fisk considering a run at the mayorship of New York City, a well-known piece of the character’s comic history seemingly ready for adaptation with this series. It also seemed to have given most of the original Daredevil series, Hawkeye, and the first season of The Punisher substantial viewership bumps.
Sources: The Hollywood Reporter, ComicBook, Daredevil Updates