With Marvel set to give us our first look at its Netflix series Daredevil at the New York Comic Con next month, Marvel’s Head of Television Jeph Loeb has taken a moment to discuss the upcoming show during an interview on KFI AM 640 (via ComicBook), stating that fans wanting to know what they’re not doing with Daredevil need look no further than the 2003 feature film starring Ben Affleck.
“When we started talking to our actors and to our directors, this is with all due respect to the film, if you want to know what we’re not doing, go watch the movie. If you want to know what we’re doing, it’s very much steeped in the world of the comics, but it also has a life of its own and that’s really what television and our films really do is that we take the best….We hope and we’re very confident that this is the beginning of something that’s very exciting on Netflix.”
Loeb also went on to share a few thoughts on how Daredevil and the subseuqent series for Jessica Jones, Luke Cage and Iron Fist will occupy their own little street-level corner of the Marvel Cinematic Universe as we build to The Defenders:
“When I watched The Avengers, which is really one of my favorite movies, during the scene when the sky opens up, the Chitauri are coming and there’s a giant battle over by Grand Central Station, even in the theater I was thinking, ‘In the true Marvel Universe if you go about ten blocks over and an avenue down, there’s a place called Hell’s Kitchen and in that world are characters like Daredevil and Jessica Jones and Luke Cage, Hero for Hire, and those characters are not going to be involved in an inter-warfare-universe-colliding incident.’ That’s what the Avengers do and they do it really, really well and those movies are incredible. We wanted to have an opportunity to be able to tell stories about our street-level heroes and how that they could possibly interact in the world of Marvel without it feeling like it’s completely detached and by the same token feeling like it’s part of that world. And it’s very much how it is in the comics, which is that Daredevil — yes, one could argue that at some point he’s been an Avenger but hey, you know, the reality is that so has everybody else [laughs]. The idea is that this is the world of people who are there to protect the neighborhood and if you believe in the neighborhood the way you believe in the planet then the emotional context is just strong.”
Set to arrive in May 2015, Daredevil is currently shooting now with a cast that includes Charlie Cox (Stardust) as Matt Murdoch/Daredevil, Deborah Ann Woll (True Blood) as Karen Page, Elden Henson (The Butterfly Effect) as Foggy Nelson, Vincent D’Onofrio (Law & Order: Criminal Intent) as the Kingpin, Scott Glenn (The Silence of the Lambs) as Stick, Peter Shinkoda (Falling Skies) as Hachiro, and Rosario Dawson (Sin City: A Dame to Kill For) in an as-yet-unrevealed role.
