Security was tight but all will be revealed on April 10. No, it’s not the newest gadget from Apple, but the latest release from that other notoriously secretive organization — Marvel.
Netflix will release all 13 episodes of the first season of “Daredevil,” starring Charlie Cox (“Boardwalk Empire”) as Matt Murdock, a lawyer who was blinded in a childhood accident but developed extraordinary powers and fights crime at night.
“Things were so clamped down during the shoot,” says Rosario Dawson, one of the show’s guest stars, “that some of the cast and crew didn’t even know what they were shooting.”
“Marvel is very secure with all the material, and rightly so,” says Steven S. DeKnight, “Daredevil’s” showrunner. “With the passion of the fans, it’s got to be careful of anything getting out.”
In the comic book universe, Matt Murdock/Daredevil is different from most of Marvel’s familiar superheroes like Thor and Iron Man. While gifted with heightened senses, Daredevil doesn’t possess any superpowers.
The series is the first of four Marvel shows for Netflix. Daredevil is one of a group of street-level crime fighters from Hell’s Kitchen in New York City that includes Jessica Jones, Luke Cage and Iron Fist. The streaming giant eventually hopes for a miniseries with all of them called “The Defenders,” a la “The Avengers.” Krysten Ritter already has been cast as Jones and Mike Colter as Cage.
After reading the “Daredevil” script, Cox says he liked the moral ambiguity of his character. “He is always crossing lines or close to crossing lines. He’s a lawyer who tries to uphold the law in the day and yet metes out vigilante justice at night. He’s not sure if the path he is taking is right.”
The British actor, who was not a comic book fan growing up, thought it was “a great opportunity to play a superhero who is frightened” and believes people will relate to the human being inside the costume.
DeKnight calls Cox a phenomenal addition to the cast and loved his work on “Boardwalk Empire.” On the HBO show, Cox played an Irish hit man. “He was charming and magnetic and then he took that really dark turn where he strangles the guy,” says the showrunner. “It speaks to the almost psychotic nature of Matt Murdock.”
Playing someone who is blind — especially someone with 360-degree radar sense — was a challenge for Cox. He worked with a blind consultant and learned “to look in the direction of the sound.” That would be toward an opposing actor’s mouth or chin.
Stunts were tricky, too, but Cox, who had martial arts and sword training while in drama school, credits a fantastic stunt team with helping him. Plus he admits he can sort of see through the scarf that covers his eyes.
Dawson starred in the two “Sin City” feature films based on the graphic novels by Frank Miller, who also worked on the Daredevil comic in the 1980s.
“My uncle is a comic book artist, so I grew up around comic books,” says the New York City actress. “So I’ve always looked at the medium of comics as something important and special and just as artistic as anything else.”
Dawson plays Claire Temple, a nurse who accidentally discovers Matt’s secret and helps him because she believes in what he is doing. “She’s transformed by this peculiar man,” she notes.
DeKnight, who previously was the showrunner for Starz’s “Spartacus,” joined “Daredevil” a few months before filming, when its original showrunner, Drew Goddard, left the project. At that point, there were two scripts and part of a third, no cast and no set.
But he says the real pressures were “the burden of bringing to life the character that I grew up with and loved and not being the guy who tanked the Marvel property.”
While “Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.” and “Agent Carter” are already on ABC, being on Netflix gives “Daredevil” more freedom.
“Marvel, to their credit, decided that with the street-level heroes they wanted to go a little bit grittier with more of a cinematic universe,” says DeKnight. “It’s a different corner of Marvel that exists in the comics but is a little darker, a little more adult oriented.”
Though “Kissing right up to it, ‘Daredevil’ never crosses completely into R-rated territory,” he adds.
Since there have been a number of different interpretations of the comic hero by different writers and artists throughout the years, including Miller, DeKnight says they have drawn from bits and pieces across the broad spectrum and massaged it into their vision of “Daredevil.” Nothing is exactly like any one version, including the story of the superhero’s nemesis, Wilson Fisk (played by Vincent D’Onofrio), a crime boss known to comic book readers as the Kingpin.
Since people binge-watch Netflix shows, that meant DeKnight and his staff were free to tell the story more like a 13-hour movie without having to remind people what happened in the previous episodes.
It also freed them from worrying about selling the show around the world. “Netflix covers so much of the world that it’s amazing,” he says.
With plans for four interconnected shows, however, things are bound to get complicated. “With everything being in Hell’s Kitchen, they have to have some cohesion,” observes DeKnight. “It’s like spinning plates.”
