Daredevil Reboot Loses Director, Rights Could Revert Back to Marvel Soon

Posted by on July 12th, 2012   Filed under: Action, Books/Comics
Source: Deadline

While you can probably expect more than a few comic book movie announcements to come out of Comic-Con this week, here’s one that isn’t being publicized very loudly. With the plethora of Marvel characters being bandied about as of late, a big one that has been missing in action for a while now is Daredevil. Fox still owns the rights and has been trying to set up a reboot ever since fans mostly rejected the 2003 film starring Ben Affleck, but it has been slow going. Last year they hired David Slade (Hard Candy, The Twilight Saga: Eclipse) to direct, but it now appears that he has been forced to exit the project due to scheduling concerns. Here’s the rub: they need to get a Daredevil movie in production by the fall or they will risk losing the rights back to Marvel and Disney. Something tells me fans will be rooting for the latter.

According to Deadline, David Slade was forced to drop out of the project due to his commitment to directing NBC’s Hannibal pilot. It seems like an unfortunate tradeoff to be forced to make, but with so much about Daredevil still up in the air, it could be a wise choice on his part.

We’ve been hearing for a while now that the movie will be based on the Frank Miller’s Born Again story arc, where Kingpin learns Daredevil’s secret identity and essentially pushes Matt Murdock to the brink of insanity. David Scarpa (The Day The Earth Stood Still) and Kyle Kinnen (The Beaver) wrote previous drafts of the script, with newcomer David James Kelly taking the most recent stab at it. The studio is supposedly happy with the script but is now in desperate need of a director.

Although we’ve seen some properties revert back to Marvel in the past (ie. the Incredible Hulk), something tells me that Fox will not be willing to let this go. Instead we’ll probably get a half-baked project that is rushed into production just to save the license. That’s not good news for anyone, but hey, if they can find the right director in time, maybe it will turn out okay. Are you disappointed that David Slade is out? Who would you like to see direct a new Daredevil movie?



  • Kevo

    Honestly, I think the biggest mistake that Marvel ever made was licensing their characters out to different companies. We all know that 20 Century Fox and Universal won’t sell back those characters and would rather waste millions of dollars making crappy movies just to hold onto the rights then do the right thing, which is a damn shame considering Marvel would not only be able to make stellar films but also be able to incorporate different characters in several movies (I.e. Iron Man in The Incredible Hulk, Nick Fury in Captain America, The Avengers) Honestly I hope that Marvel can get Daredevil back cause honestly he’s one of my favorites but I have a feeling that we’re just gonna get another craptastic performance out of whatever director/lead actor decides they want a quick paycheck

  • Frank

    I REALLY hope Daredevil goes back to Marvel/Disney. My reasons are MANY. First I’ll start with why Fox is a BAD Marvel Movie maker:
    1) Fox has little to absolutely no recognition of what they have (They Killed off Xavier, Jean Grey AND Cyclops in one movie… that’s not an X-men movie, that’s a Wolverine and friends movie)
    2)They have no respect for the characters (i.e. You can’t put Deadpool in a movie without the character RECOGNIZING he’s in a movie, and making a funny about it.)
    3) I doubt they’re aware that the X-men, FF and DD are in the same universe. (Prolly not, but they have no respect for that either)
    Now I’d like to paint the possibilities if Marvel/Disney gets the character back:
    1) Punisher started the ‘Marvel Knights’ franchise (The opening screen of the white Marvel logo coming into view against a red back drop and flipping comic sounds was changed to a black-based ‘Marvel Knights’ over the same red backdrop), Daredevil is the leader of the Marvel Knights, and could jumpstart another Avengers-like franchise with the street level heroes (sorry spider-man)
    2) Marvel/Disney has said that if they get Daredevil back, they plan on a Christopher Nolan (The Dark Knight series) level story… which means DD’s past involving the Chaste and the Hand would be an important part of his starting story-line.
    3) With Dr. Strange, Iron Fist and Power Man in talks at Disney (They’re only in talks, that’s a good sign!) the Marvel Knights franchise looks even more promising (and consider then when the Marvel Knights cross paths with the Avengers!) [drools]
    4)Daredevil fans would see their hero FINALLY get the respect and dignity he deserves (He is the Batman of Marvel after all).
    5) with Wolverine stuck at Fox, and Spider-Man at Sony, Daredevil can finally get his time to shine without either one of his comic series equals over-shadowing him.
    Now seeing how Fox corrupts everything they touch… I may be getting my hopes up, but the clock is ticking, and for once time is on our side.

  • @Kevo
    “Honestly, I think the biggest mistake that Marvel ever made was licensing their characters out to different companies.”

    Well, how in the hell did you expect them to get into big-budget films at all if they didn’t do that in the first place? They aren’t like DC, who are owned by Warner, who can pretty much do with DC’s characters as they please. Marvel of 15, or even 10 years ago was a way, way, wayyyyyyyyy different place than it is today. They spent much of the late-90’s crawling out of bankruptcy. They were lucky they could get books out on time, so they were in NO position to make their own films. Selling the film rights to studios was certainly a part of that re-building process, as their previous owner (one of the richest men in the world) treated the company like a joke and had no intention of spending any money to promote the characters in such a way, even if it meant making a lot MORE money down the road. There’s a book about the fight for control of bankruptcy-era Marvel called “Comic Wars”, which chronicles how they’ve gone from a company that the owner was going to funnel all the debts of his other companies into, thus forcing them to sell off their assets (translation: the characters that made them what they are), to the path that brought them to where they eventually ended up. I think the book came out almost a decade ago, shortly after the first Spider-Man movie came out, so it would be really interesting if the author wanted to do a follow-up.

  • Oh, and could you say “honestly” one MORE time?