As the MCU gets set for production on Daredevil: Born Again, the Disney+ show is beefing up on its lawyer quota to help bring Marvel Studios' fan-favorite lawyer back into the spotlight.
Charlie Cox and his MCU cohorts are deep into preparation for production on his upcoming solo series after two celebrated appearances in 2021's Spider-Man: No Way Home and 2022's She-Hulk: Attorney at Law. And while it's still unclear how Matt Murdock's history from his Netflix shows will be utilized in his MCU return, one thing is for certain - Matt's career as an attorney will be featured prominently.
Cox has already shared that he expects to see "a heavy influence of courtroom stuff" in this new series, especially with 18 episodes to dive into Matt Murdock's day job and his superhero life.
And with that heavy law influence on the way, it appears that Marvel took an exciting step toward ensuring that this side of Daredevil's story is told the right way.
Daredevil Hires Really Good Lawyers for Disney+
The Cosmic Circus reported that Marvel Studios hired David Feige, Thomas Wong, and Zachary Reiter as writers for Daredevil: Born Again. On top of their writing careers, all three have a great deal of experience as attorneys.
David Feige was a public defender in New York City, and he's written for a number of law-related programs on TV, including a one-season reboot of Tom Cruise's legal thriller The Firm. He also co-created the TNT legal drama series Raising the Bar, and he was an executive producer and writer on For Life, which centered on a prisoner becoming a lawyer in order to overturn his own life sentence.
Thomas Wong has a history with racial issues, food & wine, sexuality/gender, and the legal system/courtroom procedures over his own career as an attorney, working in New York and even selling luxury real estate in Manhattan. On TV, along with credits on Minority Report and Good Trouble, he wrote for the CBS lawyer-centric show Bull, starring longtime NCIS regular Michael Weatherly.
Zachary Reiter worked as a prosecutor in Queens, and he has experience with homicide investigations from his time as an assistant district attorney. In Hollywood, he has credits on a couple of major procedurals in Law & Order: Organized Crime along with CSI: New York; he also worked on The Firm with David Feige and Lukas Reiter, his brother.
This continues a trend that started with She-Hulk: Attorney at Law, which used She-Hulk comic writer and former lawyer Charles Soule as a legal advisor for the series.
Speaking with Marvel in October 2022, Soule shared how he got to read through all of She-Hulk's scripts and work with the writers and producers, explaining how lawyers and judges "would actually act and behave" in certain situations:
"I was able to read the scripts and talk to the writers in the writers’ room and the producers and say, well, you know, in this situation, this is how lawyers and judges and the courtroom and all those things would actually act and behave."
The writer looked at how everybody in his position "uses their life as research" and inserts themselves "into the stories they’re telling" out of necessity, also reflecting on his run writing Daredevil comics as he got to explore his own legal background:
“Every writer uses their life as research for the stories they write. They put themselves into the stories they’re telling because you kind of have to, right? In addition to writing She-Hulk, I also had a really long run on Daredevil, which is the other big Marvel Universe lawyer. So for me, having a legal background has allowed me to explore some of the Marvel characters on a lens that people who aren’t lawyers maybe wouldn’t write it the same way.”
Why Marvel Needs Lawyer Writers for Daredevil
Daredevil: Born Again has already built up incredible anticipation ahead of its release as Charlie Cox finally gets a full series to revisit one of the most popular Marvel characters in recent memory. This news should only build even more excitement for the show's 2024 debut, as Marvel looks to make sure that the lawyer world in the MCU is portrayed as close to how things work in real life as it possibly can.
Having writers with this much experience in real-world law should only help tell the Daredevil story as accurately and interestingly as possible, ensuring that Matt Murdock's time in court and his law firm is portrayed in a compelling fashion. While the excitement will mostly come from his time wearing his red mask and suit, 18 episodes is a ton of ground to cover for an MCU Disney+ show, meaning his day job will have to live up to his superhero antics in order to drive the story forward.
These writers are likely already hard at work for Born Again, with filming for the Disney+ series set to start in February and last through most of the rest of the year.
Daredevil: Born Again will then release on Disney+ in Spring 2024.
