Credit: Inside the MagicCharlie Cox, the Man Without Fear himself, says that Marvel Studios chief Kevin Feige ghosted him and co-star Vincent D’Onofrio for two years after bringing up the idea of a Daredevil reboot set in the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
Daredevil was the most prominent and popular of the Netflix MCU shows, which were, technically, kinda-sorta set in the same continuity as the Avengers movies but have always felt a little distant from the Sacred Timeline.
While that was narratively part of the point, with heroes like Matt Murdock (Charlie Cox), Jessica Jones (Krysten Ritter), Luke Cage (Mike Colter), and Danny Rand (Finn Jones) handling grittier, darker threats to the world than Iron Man (Robert Downey Jr.), it also was because of behind-the-scenes politicking.
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While Kevin Feige ran the film side of Marvel Studios, the Netflix shows were produced by Jeph Loeb under the Marvel Television banner, which reportedly created a significant amount of executive tension.
This was also in the years when former Marvel chairman Ike Perlmutter called a lot of the shots of what the MCU could do, so after the dust settled and Feige was the last exec standing, it makes sense that characters that he had little direct influence over were put back into the toybox for a while.
Now, Charlie Cox has revealed (via People) that Marvel contacted him and Vincent D’Onofrio (who portrays Wilson Fisk, AKA the Kingpin) as early as 2020, only to go radio silent.
Speaking at the recent D23 event in Anaheim alongside D’Onofrio, Cox said, “I think that we stopped shooting the original show at the end of 2016, beginning of 2018, and found out it was canceled somewhere in that period. And then it wasn’t until midway through 2020 that we got a phone call from Kevin [Feige] saying that they were interested in bringing the characters back.”
However, it turns out that there was no actual talk of a reboot and literal years passed without further word. Charlie Cox continued, saying, “[It was] not even in the show at that point, just bringing the characters into MCU…I completely let go.” Surprisingly, it was D’Onofrio who held out hope. Cox says:
“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.”
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It turns out that Charlie Cox should have listened to his on-screen adversary, considering that the Daredevil: Born Again reboot is one of the most anticipated upcoming Marvel projects. Since the Netflix series concluded, Cox has returned as Matt Murdock in Spider-Man: No Way Home (2021) and She-Hulk: Attorney at Law, while D’Onofrio has appeared in Hawkeye and Echo.
However, the duo has not faced off against each other in years, and fans are champing at the bit.
According to Marvel Studios Head of TV and Streaming Brad Winderbaum, the new series is “taking it in a new direction. These characters have matured. The universe is different than it was. Things have changed. Society’s changed.” But it seems that the important thing that changed is that Marvel figured out how to use a phone.
Do you want to see the other members of the Defenders show up in the MCU?