Marvel is a Marvel-driven medium: All it takes is firings, reshoots, overhauls, and disasters

Since the advent of scripted television, the medium has largely revolved around pilots being shot and showrunners being hired to test out a prospective series, and then ensure there’s a single creative force steering the vision should it be awarded a full-season order. Having learned the hard way that some rules weren’t made to be broken, the Marvel Cinematic Universe is back at the drawing board.

A bombshell story from The Hollywood Reporter revealed the mishandling of the franchise’s small screen content has gotten so out of hand that Daredevil: Born Again has booted the majority of its key creatives and will effectively start from scratch once again when the strikes are over, but you can’t say it hasn’t been a long time coming.

The MCU’s Disney Plus content has avoided the term “showrunner” like the plague since its inception, with Kevin Feige and his bosses signing off on multi-episode runs that cost upwards of $150 million to produce, leading to wildly polarizing or often flat-out terrible results in the case of She-Hulk: Attorney at Law and Secret Invasion. As one insider put it, “TV is a writer-driven medium, Marvel is a Marvel-driven medium.” 

Not any more, though. It’s noted that Marvel will now be hiring and relying upon showrunners, writing proof-of-concept pilots and show bibles, avoiding the recurring habit of shooting everything and then working backwards from there to see what went wrong. Daredevil: Born Again might need to be born again… again, but it could be the start of a brave new era for the superhero saga’s flagging episodic adventures.

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