Despite being the star of Netflix’s hit fan-favorite superhero series Daredevil, Charlie Cox was among the fans who believed his return to the character was just not in the cards.
Even after Marvel boss Kevin Feige called him in 2020 to talk about Daredevil’s place in the MCU, Cox really believed he would only be back to make a cameo or two.
But he says his co-star, Vincent D’Onofrio, who plays Wilson Fisk, aka Kingpin, in the franchise, never gave up hope, and always believed they’d be back on screen.
Now we are just weeks away from seeing their follow-up series, Daredevil: Born Again, but it’s been a long road to get here. The character’s return was pitched back in 2020, right in the midst of the global pandemic, which shuttered Hollywood and ground all productions to a halt.
Then, once things opened up again, there were strikes to contend with, and a complete overhaul of the series happened partway into production.
New writers were hired, and the show headed in a new direction. Speaking on how it felt to do an about-face mid-shoot, Cox explained to GQ:
“The thinking was, Well, we don’t want to do the same thing. We’ve done that,” Cox says. Although Cox and D’Onofrio both agreed to return, it was reported that the showrunners initially recast several other characters, drawing mixed reactions from fans.
“Cox, for his part, says that he started to have doubts early in production. “Vincent and I were both not 100 per cent convinced what we were doing at the time was the right path, but we’re both good soldiers and professionals, and we were trying to be open-minded.”
In May 2023, with six episodes already largely shot, the Writers Guild Of America went on strike, halting production on the show.
“The writers’ strike happened, then the actors’ strike, which gave the producers an opportunity to look at our episodes and decide that it wasn’t quite working,” Cox says. Once again, he got an ominous call from Marvel – this time to say that he wouldn’t be going back to work as planned.
But rather than cancel the project, Marvel’s bosses replaced Born Again’s showrunners, Matt Corman and Chris Ord, with Dario Scardapane, who had worked on Netflix’s The Punisher.
Scardapane, Cox says, reworked the series, adding three entirely new episodes, and wrote additional scenes to reconnect the previously-shot material into one, coherent whole.
The new showrunners also rehired much of the original cast and crew, including Deborah Ann Woll (Karen Page), Elden Henson (Foggy Nelson), and Phil Silvera, the stunt coordinator behind the original’s famously brutal action sequences.
“We made it known that we were not happy, and the big bosses, especially Kevin [Feige], listened to us,” D’Onofrio told me. The result, Cox says, “feels much more in keeping with the kind of stuff we did at Netflix.”
Cox is quick to say that he bears no ill will towards the initial creative team on Born Again, but “in a bizarre twist of fate, the strikes that were so terrible for so many people in the industry ended up being the best thing that happened for our particular show.”
As for whether he believes Daredevil should be part of the greater Marvel community, Cox says, “I think it’s more possible than it’s ever been, yeah,” Cox says.
“I would love to be in one of the Avengers films, or another Spider-Man, or something like that. For a couple of reasons. One, because over the years I have become a geeky fan of the character, and I weirdly, for the character’s sake, feel like it’d be really cool for him to get that kind of upgrade.”
The second reason is smaller, more personal: “I would also just love it in terms of what it would do for my chances of getting other movie roles.”
I think it’s unanimous that just from the Netflix seasons of Daredevil alone, fans are happy to welcome Charlie Cox into the Avengers family. I hope the rewrites were just what this character needed to reunite him with a storyline he deserves. I can’t wait to check it out!
Daredevil: Born Again is set to premiere on Disney+ on March 4th.
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