Daredevil: Born Again Gets a Showrunner

Television

Marvel is getting the Man Without Fear back on track. An exclusive from The Hollywood Reporter reveals that after firing Chris Ord and Matt Corman (sort of; they’re executive producers now, which is a nice way of sidelining them) and committing to retooling the show, Marvel has found a showrunner for Daredevil: Born Again: Dario Scardapane. Scarpane has some experience with Marvel shows, having been the showrunner for season 1 of the Netflix series The Punisher, which was a spin-off of Daredevil; he also worked on the Amazon series Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan. Marvel has also hired Justin Benson and Aaron Moorhead to direct the rest of the episodes; the team has previously directed episodes of Loki and Moon Knight. The ongoing actors’ strike has put filming for Daredevil: Born Again in limbo, but after deciding to make significant changes to the show, Marvel is getting their ducks in a row so they can resume production as soon as possible.

Well, this is… better, I guess. I’m not a huge fan of The Punisher or Jack Ryan (the latter of which, to be fair, I only saw the first season of, and that was before Scardapane came aboard), but those shows have a more serious tone than Covert Affairs, the series run by Ord and Corman. I don’t understand why they didn’t at least attempt to get one of the Daredevil showrunners to return, but at least Scardapane feels like a step in the right direction. I’m less enthusiastic about Justin Benson and Aaron Moorhead; once more, Marvel is hiring in-house people from projects that weren’t all that good. But on a TV show, directors don’t have a lot of say about the story; that’s what a showrunner is for, and Marvel eschewing them may be a big part of why their shows have mostly sucked so far. This change seems like weak sauce to me; I was hoping to hear something exciting and heartening, but it’s mostly worthy of little more than a shrug.