The irony in Marvel Studios and Disney deciding to tear up its current version of Daredevil: Born Again and start over once the actors’ strike has subsided and the cast can return to work is plain for all to see, with one cutting comment from former Netflix showrunner Steven DeKnight standing out.
It was noted in the bombshell report revealing that several key creative team members have been fired that one of the main points of contention was the MCU’s reboot veering too far away from the “action and violence” that helped make its predecessor so popular to begin with, leaving the powers-that-be dissatisfied with the “legal procedural” that was beginning to take shape in its stead.
Of course, Kevin Feige and company will tell you that Born Again has nothing to do with the three-season favorite that aired on a rival streamer beyond the obvious caveat of Charlie Cox, Vincent D’Onofrio, and Jon Bernthal playing the exact same characters, which makes it infinitely more fascinating that the people actively attempting to turn a TV series focusing on the Man Without Fear into something noticeably different have been given their marching orders.
Last month, DeKnight referred to the mere existence of Born Again as “an old Disney scam,” with the decision to make a show based on the same superhero featuring several of the same actors that technically stands alone a sneaky method of resetting contractual terms back to a first-season basis, and his point has become even more prominent now that the do-over is set to start from scratch once more.
Born Again was apparently too different from the Netflix original it wants nothing to do with, which has in turn seen the reset abandoned in its current iteration, where it’ll no doubt be refitted into something that feels more like its counterpart, even though they’re completely unconnected. Got all that?