The Director of ‘The Grey’ Wanted To Make a ‘Daredevil’ Trilogy — And Maybe They Should Have Let Him

Marvel’s Daredevil is more popular than ever thanks to the much-lauded Disney+ series, Daredevil: Born Again, with both live-action series starring Charlie Cox being far better received than Ben Affleck‘s 2003 movie. One person in Hollywood who isn’t a fan of that series—he hasn’t even watched it yet—is filmmaker Joe Carnahan, who bounced between gritty indie crime-thrillers and bigger studio action movies throughout the early ’00s, though how many people realized that he once pitched a trilogy of period-set Daredevil movies? That was confirmed when CBR’s Grae Drake spoke to the filmmaker recently for his new action flick, Shadow Force, Carnahan going into details about what he had planned and how not getting those films made has made it difficult for him to watch and enjoy Born Again himself.

Joe Carnahan Made a Name for Himself With the Grittiest of Action Films

Although Joe Carnahan’s directorial debut, Blood, Guts, Bullets, and Octane, didn’t make huge waves in 1998, he made the crime-thriller Narc with the late, great Ray Liotta four years later, and that helped set him up as a filmmaker of gritty crime films. Soon, he was writing and directing studio action movies, with Smokin’ Aces in 2006, followed by an A-Team movie in 2010, and then, the survival thriller, The Grey, also starring Liam Neeson, a year later. Based on that filmography, the idea of Carnahan pitching a Daredevil movie doesn’t seem that strange a notion, but apparently, his pitch was for a triptych of period films, confirmed in his interview with CBR, saying, “My Daredevil was a trifecta, and it was Daredevil ’73 which was classic rock, Daredevil ’79, which was punk rock, and Daredevil ’85, which was new wave.”

Digging around a bit, Carnahan’s pitch would have taken place around 2012, shortly after his The A-Team movie for 20th Century Fox, the studio having held the rights to the Daredevil character at a time before the entire studio was bought by Disney. This would also have been a few years before Netflix launched its own Daredevil series and the related Marvel “Defenders-verse” in 2015. One might wonder whether anyone would even know who Charlie Cox was if things went off in the direction planned by Carnahan instead.

Carnahan Can’t Even Watch ‘Daredevil: Born Again’

Image via Marvel, Disney+

Having had such a bigger vision for his triptych of period films that never happened, Carnahan also told CBR he has trouble sitting down to watch any of the new Daredevil series, despite knowing many people involved with making them.

“It’s hard for me to get into that. I think I got my heart broken by not being able to do it, and I know Charlie Cox is great. My buddy Dario Scardiopane runs the show. I love [Jon] Bernthal to death. I should have better reasons for not having seen it, but I don’t. I can’t do it.”

If Carnahan wanted to make a trio of Daredevil movies, maybe Fox should have at least given him the chance to make the first one, since it would likely have been quite violent and bone-crunching, not unlike the Netflix and Disney+ series, though it also would have kept the character on the big screen. Despite his trepidation about watching the Daredevil series, Carnahan has clearly moved on from that original idea, though, as he also says in that same interview: “The A-Team was as close as I ever came to, like a guy with a cape, you know?”

Related

“I Wasn’t Into It”: Charlie Cox Reveals the One ‘Daredevil: Born Again’ Episode He Didn’t Love

“That feels like a 1970s game.”

Carnahan’s Daredevil may have to remain one of those mythic projects that never happened, a bit like Alejandro Jodorowsky’s Dune, which at least had a decent documentary made about what happened there. Regardless, Carnahan remains one of the busier filmmakers, and of course, a second season of Daredevil: Born Again has already been announced, with Krysten Ritter‘s Jessica Jones returning for that. Carnahan has plenty of other movies in the works and mostly non-IP ideas, including RIP with none other than Ben Affleck and his pal Matt Damon, and the long-completed and controversial Nick Schuyler biopic, Not Without Hope, starring Zachary Levi and Josh Duhamel, which seems to have vanished without a trace. Still, it does make you wonder what Carnahan’s vision of Daredevil might have looked like.

Source : collider.com