Information reaching Kossyderrickent has it that Charlie Cox is back as Daredevil and in the red suit in first TV-MA show from Marvel.
Director Sydney Freeland said the different tone of the show evolved from the fact that it follows a villain.
“People on our show — they bleed. They die. They get killed and there are real world consequences,” said Freeland.
Echo comes as Marvel overhauls its TV business, including with Daredevil: Born Again, the upcoming series that will once again star Echo‘s Charlie Cox and D’Nofrio. The studio has hired The Punisher alum Dario Scardapane as showrunner and Loki directors Justin Benson and Aaron Moorhead as part of a creative reset on the series, which shot multiple episodes under a different team.
Marvel is certainly taking a darker turn with its upcoming Disney+ series, Echo.
A trailer for the series was released Friday, giving audiences a glimpse at the harrowing story and introducing Marvel’s first Native American and deaf lead. Echo, which is set to premiere on January 10, will also have a TV-MA rating — a first for a Marvel series on Disney’s streaming platform.
Audiences first met Alaqua Cox as Maya Lopez in Hawkeye. In Echo, Maya is being pursued by Wilson Fisk aka Kingpin’s (Vincent D’Onofrio) criminal empire. When the journey brings her home, she must confront her own family and legacy. Tonally, the footage screened for press had hints of Daredevil, Breaking Bad and John Wick and in some ways like Marvel’s version of a cable drama rather than an MCU streaming series.
The show is different from Marvel Studios in other ways as well, centering on an indigenous character who is deaf and communicates with ASL. Representation of both was important to Freeland and her team. Freeland, grew up on the Navajo reservation in New Mexico, took her department heads to the annual the annual Choctaw Pow Wow in Oklahoma for inspiration. Her team also took ASL lessons.
Said Freeland: “I needed to have some basic language where I could talk to [Cox] and look her in the eye and say ‘that was nice! Again! More emotional.’ Just some basic words for her.”
The series will also simultaneously launch on Hulu, with all five episodes available to watch at once. Watch the trailer above.
Echo marks several firsts for Marvel Studios. As noted above, this series is quite a bit grittier than its predecessors, hence the TV-MA rating. Director and executive producer Sydney Freeland told reporters at a recent press screening and event for the series that she and the creative team wanted to “lean into” Maya’s villainess.
“We wanted very, very adamantly to show that people on our show, they bleed, they die, they get killed, and there are real consequences,” she said, adding that she looked to previous Marvel series like Daredevil and Punisher for narrative and visual inspiration.
Those series, which originally debuted on Netflix, are known for having a much darker tone than most content in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, though that is set to change with Echo and presumably Daredevil: Born Again.
Freeland continued: “It’s not the fate of the universe at stake, because I think once you go that broad, you can lose sight a little bit. So that kind of dictated the tone a little bit.
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