When the rights to the Daredevil character reverted back to Marvel a few years ago, most folks figured they would either get to work on a feature film adaptation that would bring the character firmly into the Marvel Cinematic Universe fold, or sit on the rights for a few years until they figured out how best to utilize the property. As it turns out, Marvel went with secret option #3, which was to turn Daredevil into a TV series on Netflix.
The gritty, Hell’s Kitchen-set show gave Marvel the opportunity to explore a different corner of the MCU and to jump start a series of street-level stories told in longform, with Daredevil planned as the prelude to the individual Marvel TV shows Jessica Jones, Luke Cage, and Iron Fist, culminating in an Avengers-style team up miniseries called The Defenders.
We’re now over a year out from the release of Daredevil and fresh off the heels of the possibly even more successful launch of Jessica Jones, and now Netflix is teasing the superhero series to come by making title cards and loglines for Luke Cage, Iron Fist, and The Defenders available on the streaming service, as seen below (via Collider reader @JasonPChilds):
The loglines for the individual series are as follows:
Marvel’s Luke Cage – In this Marvel live action series, a street-fighting ex-con battles crime on the streets of New York as the Super Hero, Luke Cage
Marvel’s Iron Fist – “Marvel’s Iron Fist” follows Super Hero and martial arts master Danny Rand in the upcoming live-action series.
Marvel’s The Defenders – “Marvel’s The Defenders” brings together Daredevil, Jessica Jones, Iron Fist and Luke Cage in an epic Super Hero team-up in New York City.
As you can see, these are very basic and are no doubt temporary placeholders for the eventual series, but given the popularity of Marvel’s television output, we figured folks would be interested to know these popped up.
What I find curious about Marvel’s Netflix shows is how the popularity of Daredevil kind of altered their plans. The audience clamored for more Daredevil, and so Season 2 of the series is poised for release later this year. And Netflix has already ordered a second season of the critically acclaimed Jessica Jones, so a second season of that show is coming likely sometime in 2017. I imagine this pushes the production and release date of The Defenders a bit, but as long as it means we’re getting intriguing individual stories in the meantime, that seems like a fair trade.
Luke Cage is next on the docket, with Cheo Hodari Coker serving as showrunner and a debut date set for sometime in 2016. And Iron Fist now moves into the casting phase after setting Dexter alum Chris Buck as its showrunner. The wheels they are a spinnin’, and now we wait to see who Marvel will eventually choose to spearhead their TV version of The Avengers with The Defenders.
