‘Daredevil’ Hits Reset Button as Marvel Overhauls Its TV Business

quote:

---

It didn’t take long to see the problem after Marvel Studios’ Daredevil: Born Again paused production mid-June during the writers strike. Fewer than half of the series’ 18 episodes had been shot, but it was enough for Marvel executives, including chief Kevin Feige, to review the footage and come away with a clear-eyed assessment: The show wasn’t working.

So, in late September, Marvel quietly let go head writers Chris Ord and Matt Corman and also released the directors for the remainder of the season as part of a significant creative reboot of the series, The Hollywood Reporter has learned. The studio is now on the hunt for new writers and directors for the project, which stars Charlie Cox as Matt Murdock, a blind lawyer turned superhero.

The Daredevil revamp is the latest in a series of growing pains for Marvel television. Since debuting the Emmy-winning WandaVision in January 2021, the studio, which dominated the film industry in the 2010s, has released more than 50 hours of TV programming after creating a small-screen division from the ground up during the pandemic.

Through it all, the company eschewed the traditional TV-making model. It didn’t commission pilots but instead shot entire $150 million-plus seasons of TV on the fly. It didn’t hire showrunners, but instead depended on film executives to run its series. And as Marvel does for its movies, it relied on postproduction and reshoots to fix what wasn’t working.

Even though they remain, along with Star Wars titles, the most watched shows on Disney+, Marvel series have recently faced a number of creative challenges and cries of diminishing returns from critics and audience metrics, causing a major shift at the studio to move to make TV shows the more traditional way.

---