Marvel Studios’ Daredevil television series has a new creative team.
Dario Scardapane, whose recent credits include Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan as well as Netflix’s Marvel show The Punisher, has been tapped to act as the new showrunner for the series, which is in the midst of a creative overhaul.
Additionally, Justin Benson and Aaron Moorhead, the co-directing team behind indie genre thrillers who are coming off of directing episodes of Loki season two, have been hired to helm the remaining episodes that will constitute the first season on Disney+
Daredevil: Born Again was in mid-production in New York when the writers and actors strike forced it to pause. When Marvel execs reviewed the footage, they had a change of creative heart and decided to go into a new direction. The show was being spearheaded by Chris Ord and Matt Corman who were acting as head writers, but have since departed.
Daredevil is one of Marvel’s longest-running creations and previously headlined a successful three seasons on Netflix in the mid-2010s featuring Charlie Cox as Matt Murdock, a blind lawyer turned superhero. The series, as well as its spinoff Punisher, was known for his action and gritty violence. Marvel decided it wanted to harken back to the tone of that first series.
Marvel will keep some scenes and episodes that have already been shot, though other serialized elements will be injected. Scardapane will write the new episodes and new scenes, incorporating what was already shot.
Benson and Moorhead will direct the new episodes to bring this first season to a close. It is unclear how many episodes it will encompass. Corman and Ord will become executive producers.
The hiring of a showrunner is part of Marvel’s larger overhaul of how it makes its television series. The company previously made its shows much like it made its movies. But as THR previously reported, Marvel has reconfigured its model, embracing traditional TV concepts such as showrunners and pilots and series bibles.
Benson and Moorhead had a breakthrough with cult and festival circuit hits The Endless, Spring, and Synchronic. They sometimes do all the heavy lifting on their movies, from writing to acting to directing and producing to shooting, editing and visual effects. The duo directed two episodes of Marvel’s Moon Knight, which starred Oscar Isaac, and two episodes of season two of Loki, which is currently unfolding on Disney+.
Scardapane, a journalist turned screenwriter who got his breakthrough when he co-wrote the Mario van Peebles Western Posse, has considerable TV experience in the thriller genre. He created and executed produced the NBC medical drama Trauma and served as consulting producer on the Peabody-award-winning F/X crime drama The Bridge which starred Demian Bichir and Diane Kruger.
Returning to NBC, Scardapane served as showrunner on the Katherine Heigl-Alfre Woodard political drama State of Affairs before moving into streaming television, serving as writer and executive producer Punisher. Most recently he was a writer and consulting producer on Amazon’s Jack Ryan series starring John Krasinski.
Benson and Moorhead are repped by CAA and Ziffren Brittenham. Scardapane is repped by WME, Entertainment 360.