Marvel’s Man Without Fear may have superhuman senses, but a sense of humor isn’t one of them. The new Marvel TV series Daredevil: Born Again — which sees blind lawyer Matt Murdock (Charlie Cox) step back into the ring with former mob boss-turned-New York City Mayor Wison Fisk, a.k.a. Kingpin (Vincent D’Onofrio) — has been described as darker and more violent than Marvel’s Daredevil, the TV-MA-rated drama that aired three seasons on Netflix between 2015 and 2018. So showrunner Dario Scardapane (Marvel’s The Punisher) is setting the record straight and shutting down rumors that the Daredevil revival was once a comedy before undergoing a creative overhaul befitting of the title Born Again.
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“This all happened very, very recently, and from my understanding, none of that was accurate,” Scardapane told ComicBook when asked about Deadpool co-creator Rob Liefeld’s claim that “the show was a comedy” before Philip J. Silvera — a second unit director and stunt coordinator on 2015’s Daredevil and 2016’s Deadpool— “literally reshot most every episode.”
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“Phil did an amazing job with our action sequences, but he didn’t direct the episodes, and I don’t think [the producers] envisioned it as a comedy,” Scardapane said. “What I saw when I got in and started playing around wasn’t a comedy.”
According to executive producer Sana Amanat, Daredevil: Born Again retained some of the elements from head writers Chris Ord and Matt Corman’s version of the show, but in overhauling the direction, “We added some additional stuff to kind of connect it to the new version of the story. But Phil’s felt pretty dramatic to me.”
Scardapane previously explained to SFX Magazine that the old version “had some really strong points, but it wasn’t feeling in line with what Daredevil had been established to be.” Initial reports characterized Ord and Corman’s original version as a “legal procedural” that didn’t resemble the Netflix series and caused confusion about whether Born Again was a soft reboot or a continuation.
In the overhaul, Scardapane incorporated what was already shot with new scenes and episodes directed by duo Justin Benson & Aaron Moorhead (Marvel’s Moon Knight and Loki season 2), Michael Cuesta (Homeland), Jeffrey Nachmanoff (Lovecraft Country), and David Boyd (The Walking Dead). The Kevin Feige-produced Daredevil: Born Again also stars Margarita Levieva, Deborah Ann Woll, Elden Henson, Zabryna Guevara, Nikki James, Genneya Walton, Arty Froushan, Clark Johnson, Michael Gandolfini, with Ayelet Zurer and Jon Bernthal reprising his role as Frank Castle/the Punisher.
The two-episode premiere airs Tuesday, March 4 on Disney+.
