After the 2003 Daredevil film failed, (mainly critically) FOX didn’t really know what to do with the property. It was a box office hit – but fans and critics panned the film. There was a sequel with Ben Affleck in the works for a while but eventually, that never came to be. Affleck even went on to say that playing the character humiliated him and that he’d never play a superhero again. Well, uh, we all saw how that turned out – but that’s a different story.
FOX even let Joe Carnahan pitch them an idea with the character, where he gave them a sizzle reel. The film would have been rated NC-17 and ultimately didn’t come to be (you can read more about that here) and the rights reverted back to Marvel.
Fans speculated that Marvel would make a film about the character but nothing really came about for a while. I personally said and thought that this character and characters like The Punisher would be a much better fit for something like Netflix, AMC or HBO.
Time passed and eventually news broke that Marvel was in discussions with Netflix and Amazon to do 4 series based off of their properties. It was later announced that they made a deal with Netflix to produce shows based on Daredevil, Luke Cage, Jessica Jones and Iron Fist – with Daredevil being the first.
Daredevil premiered and was an instant hit. Show creator Drew Goddard recently talked with IGN about why Marvel decided to make a show instead of a film:
“I went into Marvel and talked to them about making it as a movie a couple of years ago, long after the [Ben] Affleck movie,” Goddard tells IGN. “But what we all sort of realized is that, this movie doesn’t want to cost $200 million. The thing about Matt Murdock is, he’s not saving the world. He’s just keeping his corner clean. So it would feel wrong to have spaceships crashing in the middle of the city. But because of that, Marvel on the movie side is not in the business of making $25 million movies. They’re going big, as they should.”
He added:
“It felt that we’d have more freedom to make it on the small screen and make it more adult,” he continued. “Look, if we took the Netflix [show] and put it in theaters, it’s rated R. And they’re not doing R-rated movies. And we also got to really explore the character. I feel like Netflix was the best possible home for that, otherwise you’d end up with a watered down version.”
So, there you have it. Personally, I’d rather see them get to explore the depths of these characters and make it dark – rather than get a PG-13 2 hour origin story that we’ve already seen before. It seems that most fans enjoy that idea as well.
What do you think? Would you have rather seen a Daredevil film? Sound off in the comment section below!