Marvel Studio's Daredevil Netflix Series Being Made To Be Binge-Friendly

Marvel Studios' influence in every area of Hollywood just keeps on growing. They've spent years taking over the big screen, starting with Iron Man in 2008, and by the end of this year they will not only have two different television series on the air, but will also be deep into getting their various Netflix shows ready to debut. News and updates from both trade sources and the studio have seem to confirm that Daredevil will be the first to get going of that lot, with production set to start up this summer in New York City, and now Marvel Entertainment's Chief Creative Officer Joe Quesada has spilled a few details about what we can expect from the show.

Comic Book Resources recently had the chance to speak with the former Marvel Comics Editor in Chief, and going by the executive's quotes, Daredevil is getting very close to getting up and running, with the show and the other planned series taking most of his attention nowadays. Quesada spoke on many topics during the interview, but perhaps the most interesting was the way in which he described how Marvel and showrunner Drew Goddard are looking at the program as a whole. They have been very mindful of the fact that many fans are going to want to binge watch all 13 episodes of Daredevil in one sitting, and the way the episodes are structured feeds into that. Said the CCO,

"One of the advantages is really from the planning stage -- obviously it's much easier to work with a smaller number of episodes than it is with a larger number of episodes. We can sit there and look at 13 episodes and plan it out as a very large movie. It makes seeing the bigger picture a little bit easier. You can't deny that there will be binge-viewing. You know that there are going to be some Marvel fans that when this show premieres, they are going to go on to Netflix, and they are going to sit there for 12 to 13-plus hours, and watch the entire thing all the way through... Even the way that you parse out information and reveals within the show can be different than you would on weekly TV. With weekly TV, you sit there and go, "The audience may not want to wait two or three weeks to get this particular bit of information." Whereas with Netflix, we might be able to hold onto a particular piece of information, because they may just watch it two hours later.

Quesada, who also serves as an executive producer on Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., also spoke a little more to what we can expect from Daredevil tonally. In a different interview last month, he hinted at a darker tone for the Hell's Kitchen-set series, calling the main characters "street-level superheroes" and now he's gone as far as to place the show in a particular genre. Describing his connection to the show and the character personally, Quesada said, "The dark and gritty noir world of DD and the Netflix characters, it's kind of where I live so it naturally attracts me to begin with."

Daredevil doesn't have a set release date yet, but we expect that it will come out around the same time as Luke Cage, Iron Fist, and Jessica Jones, the other three Marvel Netflix shows that will eventually all tie together for a special miniseries called The Defenders. One of the big next steps in the development process will be casting, so be sure to stay tuned in the coming months!

Eric Eisenberg
Assistant Managing Editor

Eric Eisenberg is the Assistant Managing Editor at CinemaBlend. After graduating Boston University and earning a bachelor’s degree in journalism, he took a part-time job as a staff writer for CinemaBlend, and after six months was offered the opportunity to move to Los Angeles and take on a newly created West Coast Editor position. Over a decade later, he's continuing to advance his interests and expertise. In addition to conducting filmmaker interviews and contributing to the news and feature content of the site, Eric also oversees the Movie Reviews section, writes the the weekend box office report (published Sundays), and is the site's resident Stephen King expert. He has two King-related columns.