While 20th Century Fox has secured a director for their Fantastic Four reboot, they’ve just lost one for their next Daredevil film. David Slade (Twilight: Eclipse) became attached last year, but has now dropped out due to scheduling conflicts with directing the pilot of NBC’s Hannibal starring Mads Mikkelsen (that’s the story anyway. Slade was attached for a year and didn’t even get close to filming, so he probably got tired and left).
If the Daredevil reboot is to move forward it will have to be soon, as according to Deadline the rights will revert back to Marvel if production isn’t underway by the end of the year. Fox won’t want to lose a comic book property to a rival company (Marvel is a big rival in the superhero movie world now), and it would be even worse for them if Marvel made a hit film out of it, so we will most likely see another director hired shortly.
What the rushed production means for Daredevil remains to be seen, and whoever is hired will probably have to work with the script they’ve already got, which the studio is apparently happy with. Fox rushed X-Men: First Class last year and that worked out well, but that was because they had a capable director in Matthew Vaughn and great team surrounding him.
Who do you want to see direct Daredevil, or would you rather the rights returned to Marvel?
