Charlie Cox Says The MCU’s ‘Daredevil’ Won’t Be as Dark

Cox also explained that he’s going to be busy filming the series for longer than he thought, and in related MCU news, ‘Agatha: Coven of Chaos’ adds a musical legend.

Charlie Cox as Matt Murdock in Marvel Studios' 'She-Hulk: Attorney At Law,' exclusively on Disney+.

When Marvel Studios yanked the rights to bring Daredevil stories to screens and Netflix unceremoniously cancelled their ‘Defenders’ series, which included the Man Without Fear, Charlie Cox, the Man with the red suit, might have feared that he’d taken down his last baddie.

Yet Marvel boss Kevin Feige had other ideas, bringing the British actor back for a cameo in ‘Spider-Man: No Way Home’ and a memorable, funny, and charming recurring guest spot on ‘She-Hulk’, in which his Matt Murdock (the lawyer alter ego of Daredevil) meets and, er swaps legal briefs with Tatiana Maslany’s Jennifer Walters.

All that, though, was simply to re-introduce the character ready for a full show of his own, in which he’ll once again have to deal with the nefarious, powerful Kingpin, played by Vincent D’Onofrio (who got his own MCU introduction via ‘Hawkeye’ last year).

Now, with ‘Daredevil: Born Again’, to be overseen by ‘Covert Affairs’ veterans Matt Corman and Chris Ord, Murdock will be back, albeit slightly different as befits a Disney+ series.

“This has to be a reincarnation, it has to be different, otherwise why are we doing it?” Cox tells NME in a new interview. “My opinion is this character works best when he’s geared towards a slightly more mature audience. My instinct is that on Disney+ it will be dark, but it probably won’t be as gory.”

Marvel Studios' 'Daredevil: Born Again.'

And for anyone keeping their fingers crossed for a full-on continuation of the bloodier Netflix series? “I would say to those people, we’ve done that,” he says. “Let’s take the things that really worked, but can we broaden? Can we appeal to a slightly younger audience without losing what we’ve learned about what works?”

More surprising to the actor is the sheer number of episodes that will comprise the new series. Unlike the other Disney+ Marvel offerings, which have largely been around 8-9, ‘Born Again’ will be a whopping 18-episode first run.

“I’m fascinated to discover why they’ve chosen to do 18,” he says. “I’m imagining there’s going to be an element to it that is like the old-school procedural show. Not necessarily case-of-the-week, but something where we go deep into Matt Murdock the lawyer and get to see what his life is like. If that’s done right and he really gets his hands dirty with that world… I think there’s something quite interesting about that, to spend a lot of time in a superhero’s day-to-day life and you really earn the moments when he suits up.”

Cox claims he’s yet to see scripts or outlines, which sounds more like an actor choosing to be diplomatically evasive and avoid potential spoiler questions. But he did talk about the schedule, which sounds like he’ll be a tad busy next year… “They said to me, ‘We’re going to be shooting in 2023’,” says Cox. “I said, ‘Great, when?’ They said, ‘All 2023’. I start shooting in February and finish in December.”

In addition to Cox and D’Onofrio, ‘Daredevil: Born Again’ will feature Margarita Levieva, Michael Gandolfini and Sandrine Holt. No release date has been given for the show, but given that filming schedule, we can’t imagine it’ll hit screens much before the middle of 2024.

Kathryn Hahn as Agatha Harkness in Marvel Studios' 'Wandavision'

In related MCU Disney+ news, ‘WandaVision’ spin-off ‘Agatha: Coven of Chaos’ added a legend of the stage.

Three-time Tony winner Patti LuPone is the latest recruit for the show, which will focus on Kathryn Hahn’s Agatha Harkness.

The troublemaking witch, who caused so many problems for Elizabeth Olsen’s Wanda Maximoff. That is, until Wanda (drawing on more of her Scarlet Witch power) condemned Agatha to live as Agnes, the nosy neighbor character that she’d created to infiltrate the fantasy world Wanda had built for herself over Westview, New Jersey to hide from the grief of losing Vision (Paul Bettany).

While ‘WandaVision’ was built around sitcoms that represent Wanda’s happy place, we don’t yet know what sort of show ‘Coven of Chaos’ will be, other than it presumably sees Agatha regaining her personality somehow.

We have learned about some of the people who will be populating the new series, as Aubrey Plaza, Joe Locke, Ali Ahn, Sasheer Zamata and Maria Dizzia are all new recruits for the series. Emma Caulfield Ford, meanwhile, will return as her ‘WandaVision’ character Dottie Jones––though given that that was the fantasy persona created by Wanda, we may well see her more as her actual town resident Sarah Proctor.

(L-R): Kathryn Hahn as Agatha Harkness and Elizabeth Olsen as Wanda Maximoff in Marvel Studios' 'Wandavision' exclusively on Disney+. Photo courtesy of Marvel Studios. ©Marvel Studios 2021. All Rights Reserved.

This being Marvel, there has of course been no official statement confirming any of the casting or specifying who the cast beyond Hahn play, though Plaza is reportedly taking a villainous role. It’ll be fun to see Hahn and Plaza interact whatever the latter ends up doing, since while Hahn sometimes appeared on ‘Parks and Recreation’ (where Plaza was one of the leads), they rarely shared scenes.

The same goes for LuPone, though Deadline has heard that she’ll be playing a witch. Sounds like it could a fantastic role for her.

‘Coven of Chaos’ comes from Jac Shaeffer, who created and served as head writer on ‘WandaVision’ and returns for this. That’s not the only series she’s guiding. At a much more embryonic stage is ‘Vision Quest’, which would see the return of Bettany’s synthetic being following the events of the show.

As for LuPone, she’s a musical mainstay who has won two Olivier Awards and two Grammy Awards for her accomplished theater career. She will next be seen in ‘Beau Is Afraid’, an upcoming surrealist comedy horror film written, directed, and produced by Ari Aster and starring Joaquin Phoenix.