Entertainment industry analyst Andre Einherjar speculates that the reason why The Walt Disney Company and Marvel Studios publicly scrapped Daredevil: Born Again was to head off a potential takeover by Nelson Peltz.
Daredevil: Born Again logo
Marvel Studios and The Walt Disney Company publicly scrapped Daredevil: Born Again in an exposé with The Hollywood Reporter where they also revealed they were restructuring their entire Marvel TV division.
In the report from The Hollywood Reporter’s Borys Kit, it was revealed that the show’s writers Chris Ord and Matt Corman as well as its directors were being removed from the project and the studio was planning a “significant creative reboot of the series.”
(L-R): Charlie Cox as Daredevil/Matt Murdock and Tatiana Maslany as She-Hulk/Jennifer “Jen” Walters in Marvel Studios’ She-Hulk: Attorney At Law, exclusively on Disney+. Photo by Chuck Zlotnick. © 2022 MARVEL.
On top of this, Kit revealed the new restructuring as well, “Showrunners will write pilots and show bibles. The days of Marvel shooting an entire series, from She-Hulk to Secret Invasion, then looking at what’s working and what’s not, are done.”
They also plan on hiring seasoned full-time TV executives to run their TV operations instead of borrowing from their film division.
(L-R): Charlie Cox as Daredevil/Matt Murdock and Tatiana Maslany as She-Hulk/Jennifer “Jen” Walters in Marvel Studios’ She-Hulk: Attorney At Law, exclusively on Disney+. Photo by Chuck Zlotnick. © 2022 MARVEL.
Marvel’s head of streaming, television, and animation Brad Winderbaum informed Kit, “It’s a term (showrunner) we’ve not only grown comfortable with but also learned to embrace.”
He added, “We need executives that are dedicated to this medium, that are going to focus on streaming, focus on television because they are two different forms.”
As far as his overall outlook with these changes, he explained, “We’re trying to marry the Marvel culture with the traditional television culture. It comes down to, ‘How can we tell stories in television that honor what’s so great about the source material?’”
Emilia Clarke as G’iah in Marvel Studios’ SECRET INVASION, exclusively on Disney+. Photo by Gareth Gatrell. © 2023 MARVEL.
This public scrapping came in the wake of a CNBC report noting that Peltz and his Trian Fund Management company were “reigniting a potential proxy war with Disney less than a year after dropping the initial battle.”
The CNBC report revealed that Peltz and Trian had “increased its stake to roughly 30 million shares, valued at more than $2.5 billion” and that the “firm plans to push for multiple board seats.” In the firm’s previous proxy battle, they only wanted a seat for Peltz.
Nelson Peltz via David Rubenstein YouTube
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Reacting to this news, entertainment industry analyst and the founder of the Midnight’s Edge YouTube channel Andre Einherjar posited, “Without the threat of a new proxy fight, Marvel would have done this quietly and behind the scenes. Sure, they may have announced the new writers, but they would have done it in a way where it would have sounded like they had been there all along.”
He then provided an example, “Case in point, both Ms. Marvel and the upcoming Echo and the Agatha All Along series were all subject to so extensive reshoots that they might as well have redone the whole thing.”
Einherjar then posited, “I submit that the only reason that Disney publicly admits that they are in the process of retooling Daredevil [and] in the process also tacitly admitting that their plan failed and they don’t really know what to do instead is showing Nelson Peltz, Trian, and their shareholders that they know that they’ve screwed up, but they’re taking active measures to fix it.”
“And some of those measures maybe rather drastic,” he asserted.
Iman Vellani as Ms. Marvel/Kamala Khan in Marvel Studios’ MS. MARVEL, exclusively on Disney+. Photo courtesy of Marvel Studios. ©Marvel Studios 2022. All Rights Reserved.
From there Einherjar shares that other Marvel Studios projects might be on the chopping block. He states, “Others, however; might not be so lucky. The aforementioned Echo and Agatha All Along series have already been subjected to extensive reshoots, yet they are allegedly still awful. That would be because they were exclusively made for ESG and DEI purposes. Not because the character deserved the series or because there was a story need for them. And certainly not because there was any kind of public demand for them, which there wasn’t, quite the contrary.”
“This is also true for Ironheart, who we first saw in the Female Black Panther Keep The Water Mexicans Out Of Wakanda Forever. Like Secret Invasion, the only thing any of these series can do for the Marvel brand is to damage it.”
“So what can Marvel do to avoid that brand damage? Honestly, only one thing. And that is to scrap them all. And there is a very real chance they just might do this,” he asserted.
Letitia Wright as Shuri in Marvel Studios’ Black Panther: Wakanda Forever. Photo courtesy of Marvel Studios. © 2022 MARVEL.
From there, Einherjar cites scooper MyTimeToShineHello who posited earlier this month that “Feige is cancelling all the shows. The man has lost his mind and his touch.”
And now Feige is canceling all the shows. The man lost his mind and his touch. Fire him and give the MCU to me I’ll fix it https://t.co/EYqO5EvUw5
— MyTimeToShineHello (@MyTimeToShineH) October 14, 2023
RELATED: Marvel Will Reportedly Scrap More TV Shows After ‘Daredevil: Born Again’ Including ‘Wonder Man’
Interestingly, MyTimeToShineHello is not the only source that Marvel TV shows will be scrapped.
MCU: The Reign of Marvel Studios Joanna Robinson recently did an appearance on The Watch podcast to promote the new book and asserted, “After we heard about Daredevil, I’ve also heard, again The Watch scoop, but also don’t sort me, dubious sources necessarily that they are trashing the Wonder Man project. There’s a lot of stuff that is going to go in the can.”
Wonder Man #1 (1986), Marvel Comics
Einherjar then reiterates that drastic measures such as scrapping much of Marvel’s TV slate need to be made because “shareholders will not be fooled any longer. That is why Iger and his cronies obviously realized that if they keep on pretending that everything is awesome when the shareholders can plainly see that it’s not, well then the shareholders just might rebel and boot them all out and turn the Bob Iger company into the Nelson Peltz company.”
LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA – FEBRUARY 06: (L-R) The Walt Disney Company CEO Bob Iger and Disney Studios Content Chairman Alan Bergman attend the Ant-Man and The Wasp Quantumania world premiere at Regency Village Theatre in Westwood, California on February 06, 2023. (Photo by Alberto E. Rodriguez/Getty Images for Disney)
What do you make of Einherjar’s analysis on why Daredevil: Born Again was publicly scrapped?
