Charlie Cox revealed to People magazine that he first received a call from Marvel Studios president Kevin Feige about a potential return of Daredevil in the Marvel Cinematic Universe in 2020. It would be another two years before the studio announced Daredevil: Born Again, even though Cox had already appeared in a brief cameo in Spider-Man: No Way Home. The actor became convinced during those two years that he would never get his own Daredevil series again.
“I think we stopped filming the original show at the end of 2016 and the beginning of 2018 and found out it was canceled somewhere in that period,” Cox said of his original tenure as Daredevil on the Netflix series of the same name, which ran for three seasons between 2015 and 2018. “And then we didn’t get a phone call from Kevin until mid-2020 saying they were interested in bringing the characters back.”
Marvel Studios then went completely silent on Cox, so he “completely gave up” on any possibility of starring in a Daredevil reboot. He continued to communicate with Vincent D'Onofrio, who played Kingpin, and always held out the belief that their time would come in the MCU.
“I got over it, and sometimes I would talk to Vincent and he would say things like, ‘Oh, they’re going to call me. I think they’re going to call us, but they’re going to call us,’” Cox said. “And I would get off the phone and say, ‘This guy is delusional! He needs to forget about it. It’s going to be 10 years and he’s still going. It’s over. It’s definitely over.’”
Cox added that he was “shocked” when the second call came two years later confirming the plan to bring Daredevil into the MCU and give him his own series titled “Daredevil: Born Again,” the first footage of which was recently shown at Disney's D23 conference.
Cox is joined in Daredevil: Born Again by returning cast members Jon Bernthal as the Punisher; Deborah Ann Woll as Karen Page; Elden Henson as Foggy Nelson; and Wilson Bethel as Poindexter. New cast members include Michael Gandolfini, Margarita Levieva, Jeremy Earle and Ayelet Zurer.
It’s been a long road to the screen for “Daredevil Born Again.” The series hit a pacing problem last year when filming was halted amid the Writers Guild of America strike. With less than half of the episodes shot before production was shut down, Marvel decided to overhaul the project entirely, with just a few shots left. The show has taken a new creative direction after parting ways with lead screenwriters Chris Ord and Matt Corman. Dario Scardapane, who wrote and executive produced Marvel’s Netflix series “The Punisher,” is now the show’s executive producer.
Daredevil: Born Again won't premiere on Disney+ until March 2025, but a second season is already in development.
