Three years ago, we interviewed The Cabin in the Woods director/co-writer Drew Goddard and, during the course of the conversation, he discussed his passion for Daredevil comics. Cut to a few years later and Marvel enlisted Goddard to create, write, run, and direct its Daredevil TV series for Netflix. But before production began, Goddard was offered the chance to direct the Sinister Six movie for Sony, so he opted to vacate his Daredevil showrunner position so he could focus on getting the Spider-Man spinoff off the ground. Unfortunately, Sony Pictures scrapped Sinister Six in the wake of The Amazing Spider-Man 2, but while Goddard isn’t returning to Daredevil as showrunner, it appears he’s still very much involved in the series.
Steve recently sat down with Goddard at the Toronto International Film Festival to talk about The Martian (which he wrote), and the conversation turned to Daredevil. Since there was speculation early on that Goddard might take the helm of Marvel and Sony’s new Spider-Man movie, Steve asked the filmmaker what it’ll take to get him behind the camera on a Marvel movie:
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“I love Marvel, I still work with them. I was in the writers room of Season 2 a couple weeks ago—it’s going. I think this sort of got portrayed as this sort of animosity, [but] it’s never been the case. They know I love their properties, they’ve been very nice to me, we just keep trying to find the right fit.
For me it’s all about how do I make it personal? With Matt Murdock I just had such a personal connection to that character it was just like, ‘I have to do this.’ I don’t want to—I call it “superhero karaoke”, I don’t wanna be a guy that just takes the comics and then shoots them onscreen. I think it’s our job to treat it as if it’s our run. If I’m the writer of a comic book, you wouldn’t just retell someone else’s story, you would just take that ball and move it forward.”
That outlook actually makes a lot of sense, and I do wish some other superhero filmmakers would take that approach to their adaptations. Regardless, Goddard expanded on his role in Daredevil’s second season, saying he’s still onboard as an executive producer and consults on story:
“My job is wonderful which is—I mean my friends are running it, Marco [Ramirez] and Doug [Petrie], and when I say, ‘What do you guys need?’ they say, ‘Come in, talk.’ That’s how it works, I’m still the executive producer. I show up and we talk about Matt Murdock and I say, ‘Do you need any more help?’ and they say, ‘No,’ and then I leave (laughs).”
Marvel and Netflix are simultaneously developing other series in addition to Daredevil, with Jessica Jones poised to debut this year followed by Luke Cage, Iron Fist, and The Defenders. Steve asked Goddard if he might be involved in any of those shows, and he seems open to the prospect of talking about comic-book characters for a living:
“I’m always there when they wanna talk about it, because this is what I do in my spare time anyway, sit around and talk about Daredevil. So if it counts as a job, I’m always ready to do it.”
While Goddard was remiss to provide and hints about Daredevil’s run-in with The Punisher (played by Jon Bernthal) in Season 2, he did offer this vague tease:
“I will say that it has been a joy to talk about Season 2 and I think fans are gonna be really excited.”
For now it's not clear what feature film Goddard will be tackling next, but his script for The Martian is incredibly sharp, so I imagine we’ll be hearing about another project from the filmmaker very, very soon.
In the meantime, Daredevil Season 2 is currently in production and will debut on Netflix sometime in 2016.
