Director Joe Carnahan did his best to get a new Darevevil movie made, but he was brought in so late in the game there was no way they would have the time to develop it properly. So it looks like Fox will be giving the rights to the character back to Marvel. I loved what Carnahan wanted to do with it, by setting the story in a 1970s Hells Kitchen! The sizzle reel he put together has an awesome vibe!
During a radio interview with The Radio Dan Show he talked about what happened with his attempt at getting the movie made...
I was brought in pretty late in the game, and my take probably didn’t help matters since they had an existing script. But I just thought that if you were going to do it, this was the way to go. This is the way that intrigued me… It was initially something I passed on because Christopher Nolan had done such a lovely job with Batman and unless you’re going to go after that trilogy, then that’s how you have to think. You can’t out-hurdle that, then what’s the point of trying? So it set the bar extraordinarily high, and I thought ‘Well, if we’re going to do this, let’s have a discussion about Hell’s Kitchen, and how it was really Hell’s Kitchen in the 70s,” so that got me really excited. But as I mentioned, the clock ticking and this kind of October drop-dead date, it wasn’t tenable. And having gone down this road in the past when you’re trying to write something and shoot it at the same time is disastrous, and I think you’d need an adequate amount of time to put that script together in the right way. My brother [Matthew Michael Carnahan (The Kingdom)] was interested in writing it with me, so we’ll see.
It's a shame that this won't happen anytime soon. Hopefully Marvel likes the idea and one day brings Carnahan in to realize his vision of the character. Not sure if that will happen though, because Marvel is a Disney brand now, and this version of Daredevil would be crazy dark.
Did you like Carnahan's idea, and are you looking forward to seeing what Marvel ends up doing with the character once they get him back?