Tag: The Martian

Drew Goddard Once Pitched Marvel A Daredevil Movie Reboot

daredevil-Goddard

During the press junket for Ridley Scott’s The Martian, IGN sat down for a lengthy interview with writer Drew Goddard. Quizzed on everything from The Sinister Six to Cabin in the Woods 2, Goddard even found time to talk about the movie he was there to promote.

When Drew Goddard stepped down as showrunner on Daredevil shortly after it got started, I was pretty broken up that he was moving on. Thankfully, the end results of the Netflix/Marvel series were a thunderous success, and he remains a fixture in the writer’s room for the forthcoming second season. Long before the Netflix series was a reality, Goddard revealed that he once pitched a Daredevil movie to Marvel, unsuccessfully.

“I went into Marvel and talked to them about making Daredevil as a movie a couple of years ago, long after the Affleck movie. But what we all sort of realised is that, this movie doesn’t want to cost $200 million. The thing about Matt Murdock is, he’s not saving the world. He’s just keeping his corner clean. So it would feel wrong to have spaceships crashing in the middle of the city. But because of that, Marvel on the movie side is not in the business of making $25 million movies. They’re going big, as they should.”

While it’s difficult to argue with his point, I do disagree over Marvel exclusively making $200 million movies. Surely it could be more interesting if they gave Goddard $25 million and said “knock yourself out, make it R-rated”. If it doesn’t work, try again a different way. I understand there is a level of diluting the value of a comic book character, but Marvel should mean more than huge budgets and filmmaking by committee. It was the creative freedom of making a TV Daredevil that allowed the producers to have a harder tone.

“It felt that we’d have more freedom to make it on the small screen and make it more adult. Look, if we took the Netflix [show] and put it in theatres, it’s rated R. And they’re not doing R-rated movies. And we also got to really explore the character. I feel like Netflix was the best possible home for that, otherwise you’d end up with a watered down version.”

He’s not wrong.

Next year all eyes will be on Captain America: Civil War (aka Avengers 2.5), bursting at the seams with more superheroes that both Avengers movies combined. For me, Deadpool is the most important superhero release of 2016 as it could make studios less cautious over R-rated comic book movies. Exciting times.

If you fancy reading Goddard’s full interview, head on over to IGN.

The Martian is out now in cinemas.