Deadpool & Wolverine might have been a huge hit for Marvel Studios, but it’s fair to say the Marvel Cinematic Universe needs to wow us consistently a few more times before we can claim we’re in the ‘Good Zone’ again. All eyes are now set on 2025’s releases, and those include Daredevil: Born Again, which is coming to Disney Plus and seemingly has been in the works for longer than we thought.
During the last D23 event, Daredevil: Born Again stars Charlie Cox (Matt Murdock aka Daredevil) Vincent D’Onofrio (Wilson Fisk aka Kingpin) chatted with People and unveiled some of what happened behind the scenes as the original Netflix series was cancelled and nothing happened for a few years despite an unexpected call from Marvel honcho Kevin Feige in 2020.
“It wasn’t until midway through 2020 that we got a phone call from [President of Marvel Studios] Kevin [Feige] saying that they were interested in bringing the characters back…not even in the show at that point, just bringing the characters into MCU,” Cox explained. Remember that Marvel Studios was still figuring out how the post-Endgame MCU would look like past phase four at that point, so it makes sense that maybe the initial plan was to bring their characters into an entirely different project, such as a Spider-Man movie.
Cox continued, stating he’d given up after like two years of not hearing anything from Marvel Studios: “I’d moved on and occasionally Vincent and I would chat and he would say things like, ‘Oh, they’re going to call. I think they’re going to us, but they’re going to call us,’… and I would get off the phone and be like, the guy’s delusional! He’s got to let it go. It’s going to be 10 years and he’s still going. It’s over. It’s definitely over.” This is likely a sentiment that many members of the Netflix/Marvel shows shared over the years, but things were just taking a bit longer to come together. In the end, a new Daredevil show was confirmed to be in pre-production in 2022, and that caught everyone by surprise, except maybe D’Onofrio, who never lost hope and even showed up in Hawkeye as Cox had a small big-screen cameo in Spider-Man: No Way Home.
More than two years and one major rework of the entire series later, Daredevil: Born Again is essentially looking like Daredevil season 4, and that includes Jon Bernthal’s return as Frank Castle aka The Punisher as well. The leaked D23 trailer for Born Again, which you can find online if you look hard enough, looks raw and solid, and judging from how both Daredevil and Kingpin have been treated so far in previous MCU series like She-Hulk and Echo, I’m certainly excited to see what’s next for the two characters in their own, more adult show.
