Steven DeKnight, who served as the showrunner on the first and most acclaimed season of Netflix’s Marvel series “Daredevil,” has taken issue with the way the upcoming Disney+ revival has been labelled.
Disney is semi-rebooting the property with “Daredevil: Born Again,” an eighteen-episode series set within the MCU which sees the returns of Charlie Cox (Daredevil), Vincent D’Onofrio (Kingpin) and Jon Bernthal (The Punisher) from their respective Netflix shows.
On Monday, a post on Twitter indicated that by rebooting the series, contracts related to the show apparently are reset to first-season contract terms with the behind-the-scenes workers union IATSE.
DeKnight was mentioned in the posting asking if he was aware. He responded on Twitter by calling it an “old Disney scam” whereby slightly renaming a series resets contract terms of that show back to the first season.
He adds that this “needs to be addressed” by all the guilds/unions. He then says that due to the title change, he won’t see any royalties or payment as they “can claim it’s a completely different show.”
He then stresses he is excited to watch the series and “can’t wait to see Charlie Cox and the amazing Vincent D’Onofrio reprise their iconic roles,” even if he disagrees with the name change to avoid paying original creatives – a move he dubs “corporate shenanigans”.
“Daredevil: Born Again” was set to debut on Disney+ in Spring 2024, but production was indefinitely paused in June due to the strike. Matt Corman and Chris Ord are showrunners of the new series.
Source: Variety
