DANGING WITH THE DEVIL

AFTER A TUMULTUOUS PRODUCTION, DAREDEVIL FINALLY RETURNS FOR HIS OWN SERIES. SFX MEETS THE TEAM BEHIND BORN AGAIN...

- JACK SHEPHERD

SEVEN YEARS ago, Charlie Cox's world was rocked. Preparations had begun for the fourth season of Daredevil when Netflix, seemingly out of nowhere, decided to pull the plug.

The series that had been part of Cox's life for almost five years was over and Matt Murdock's story would remain unfinished. But then, two years later, Kevin Feige called. The Marvel boss wanted to know whether Cox would return as the blind vigilante lawyer in Spider-Man: No Way Home and She-Hulk.

Those two projects were filmed in 2021, but it wasn't until January 2022, following the release of the rapturously received No Way Home, that Marvel decided Daredevil deserved a second chance going solo. What followed could have easily been dubbed The Year of The Devil: the original Netflix series moved to Disney+, a revival series was announced at San Diego Comic-Con, and Matt got lucky in She-Hulk.

STRIKE FORCE

Come 2023, the cameras started rolling on Born Again and everything was going smoothlyuntil, that is, the actors' strike.

With production forced to pause, Marvel took a long, hard look at the already filmed six episodes and realised something shocking: it simply wasn't working. Cue a creative overhaul that saw head writers Matt Corman and Chris Ord being replaced by The Punisher alumnus Dario Scardapane.

"[The footage] had some really strong points," Scardapane tells SFX, "but it wasn't feeling in line with what Daredevil had been established to be." The problems stemmed from Born Again trying to continue elements of the Netflix series while also soft-rebooting it. The character Vanessa - wife of the villainous Wilson Fisk - had been recast, while rumours spread online that Foggy Nelson and Karen Page, Murdock's best friends, were killed off in the premiere.