Illustration by Yiran Jia
It didn’t take long for the problem to be recognized after production on Marvel Studios’ Daredevil: Born Again was halted in mid-June due to the writers’ strike. Less than half of the series’ 18 episodes had been filmed, but it was enough for Marvel executives, including boss Kevin Feige, to review the footage and come to a clear conclusion: The show wasn’t working.
As has learned, Marvel quietly fired lead writers Chris Ord and Matt Corman in late September and also fired the directors for the rest of the season as part of a significant creative reboot for the series. The studio is now looking for new writers and directors for the project, which stars Charlie Cox as Matt Murdock, a blind lawyer turned superhero.
The Daredevil revamp is the latest in a series of growing pains for Marvel television. Since the Emmy-winning WandaVision premiered in January 2021, the studio that dominated the film industry in the 2010s has released more than 50 hours of TV programming after creating a small-screen division from scratch during the pandemic.
The company abandoned the traditional TV production model. No pilots were commissioned, but entire television seasons worth over $150 million were filmed on the fly. The company did not hire showrunners, instead relying on film executives to run its series. And as Marvel does with its films, it relied on post-production and reshoots to fix what didn’t work.
While they remain the most-watched series on Disney+ alongside Star Wars titles, Marvel series have faced a number of creative challenges recently and faced calls for diminishing returns from critics and viewership, resulting in the Studio major changes had to be made to broadcast television in the more traditional manner.
“We’re trying to bridge Marvel culture with traditional television culture,” says Brad Winderbaum, Marvel’s head of streaming, television and animation. “It comes down to: ‘How can we tell stories on television that celebrate what’s great about the source material?'”
With Daredevil’s new direction, Marvel hopes to set the stage for a project with sky-high expectations. The series is the first from Marvel to feature a hero who has already had a successful series on Netflix for three seasons. However, sources say Corman and Ord developed a trial that was not similar to the Netflix version, which is known for its action and violence. Cox didn’t appear in costume until the fourth episode. After greenlighting the concept, Marvel was forced to rethink the show’s original intent.
Marvel plans to keep some scenes and episodes, but other serialized elements will be inserted, with Corman and Ord becoming executive producers of the two-season series.
Daredevil is far from the first Marvel series to undergo drastic changes behind the scenes. Those working with Marvel on the TV side have complained about a lack of central vision, which sources say has left the studio’s shows fraught with creative differences and tension. “Television is an author-driven medium,” says an insider familiar with the Marvel process. “Marvel is a Marvel-driven medium.”
At the Oscars with Isaac’s star Moon Knight, series creator and writer Jeremy Slater quit and director Mohamed Diab took over. Jessica Gao developed and wrote She-Hulk: Attorney at Law, but had to take a break from directing Kat Coiro came on board. Production has been challenging as the coronavirus crisis has affected the cast and crew, and Gao has been brought back to oversee post-production, a typical showrunner job, but it is the rare head writer at Marvel to have such oversight.
While the company doesn’t take a writer-first approach to television, directors may also feel short-changed. “The whole ‘fix it in post’ attitude sometimes makes it feel like a director doesn’t matter,” says one person familiar with the process.
As the number of shows increased during the pandemic, Marvel deviated from its usual staffing approach and brought in external executives after years of nurturing internal creatives who had been adequately trained in the Marvel method.
This change was most noticeable in Secret Invasion, the Samuel L. Jackson-directed thriller that is considered Marvel’s worst-reviewed series. Kyle Bradstreet, writer and executive producer of the USA Network Emmy-winning Mr. Robot, had been working on the scripts for Secret Invasion for about a year when he was fired after Marvel decided to go in a different direction. On stage is new author Brian Tucker, who wrote the crime novel “Broken City.” Thomas Bezucha, who directed the thriller “Let Him Go,” and Ali Selim, who worked on Hulu’s 9/11 drama “The Looming Tower,” were on board as directors and helped bring the story to fruition.
So far, so normal, at least by Marvel’s creative development standards. Details are unclear, but what happened next in the summer of 2022 weakened the production as factions consolidated and leaders vied for dominance during Secret Invasion’s pre-production in London. “People didn’t get along for weeks and then it broke out,” says an insider. Marvel declined to comment directly on the matter.
The company sent Jonathan Schwartz, an executive and member of Marvel’s creative steering committee called The Parliament, to get Secret Invasion back on track when it fell behind schedule and was on the verge of losing some actors to other commitments.
By early September, much of the Invasion team had been replaced by new production managers, production managers and assistant directors. And Bezucha, who was set to direct three episodes, left the series due to new scheduling conflicts. The Marvel executive overseeing the show, Chris Gary, has been reassigned and is set to leave Marvel when his contract expires at the end of the year, according to sources.
As it moves forward, Marvel is making concrete changes in the way it makes television. There are now plans to hire showrunners. Gao’s post-production work on She-Hulk helped Marvel realize that it would be helpful if its shows had a creative overview from start to finish.
“It’s a term that we’ve not only become comfortable with, but we’ve also learned to accept,” Winderbaum says of the showrunners and Marvel TV’s intention to hire them.
The studio also plans to bring full-time TV executives on board instead of loaning out its film executives.
“We need leaders who are dedicated to this medium, who are focused on streaming and television,” says Winderbaum, “because they are two different forms.”
It is also overhauling its development process. Showrunners will write pilots and screen Bibles. The days of Marvel making an entire series, from She-Hulk to Secret Invasion, and then seeing what worked and what didn’t are over.
And just as “Loki,” which returned on October 5, marked Marvel’s first second season of a series (out of nine TV shows to date), the studio plans to embrace the idea of multi-season serialized television and move away from the limited series format that defined it. Marvel wants to create shows that last multiple seasons, where characters can take the time to build a relationship with the audience, rather than feeling like they’re just there as a backdrop to a big crossover event.
Some of the next shows actually promise to be more personal stories. “Echo,” premiering in January, is a grounded crime story with few visual effects that centers on deaf Native American antihero Maya Lopez (Alaqua Cox). Wonder Man, a series put on hiatus due to writers and actors’ strikes, is intended to offer a behind-the-scenes look at Hollywood and a character study of Simon Williams (Yahya Abdul-Mateen II), a superhero who has a side gig as an actor and Stunt person.
Winderbaum says he wants people to watch the shows because they love the characters. It should work, he says, “beyond the fact that it’s related.” [other projects] or whether they’re in a movie or whether it’s prepping for an Avengers movie.”
A version of this story first appeared in the Oct. 11 issue of magazine. Click here to login.