Slade Tapped to Direct Next Daredevil Pic

Variety is reporting today that David Slade (The Twilight Saga: Eclipse) has been tapped to direct the next installment of the Daredevil franchise—producers are referring to this as a continuation of what has already been established and not a reboot.

There are two ways to think about a live-action approach to this property:

Consider a trilogy.

I usually despise the word trilogy in terms of superhero films—because many of them have the lasting qualities of properties such as James Bond or Harry Potter—but I think there are characters that have certain cinematic limitations that might require either one film or a long form storyline that can unfold over a series of films. I believe Daredevil is one of those characters because he doesn’t have the splashy powers of Spider-Man and he’s limited to protecting Hell’s Kitchen from a gallery of rogues that aren’t as colorful as Batman’s or the Flash’s.

Consider a television series.

Daredevil is a property that could flourish on television because he’s more grounded than his more colorful counterparts.  There’s an ability to bring more human drama integral to the source material that mass audiences might not embrace in a motion picture.

Sometimes movie companies are so hot to get their hands on a property, that little thought goes into what form of storytelling device best complements the material. The mistake with the 2003’s Daredevil was that they were dead set on bringing an epic storyline to the screen that the emotional heft of what occurs over the course of two hours was lost. Think about how much more we would have cared about the death of Eletktra if Daredevil and his lady love had met, battled, and eventually fallen in love over the course of a television season? Or even over the course of a film, allowing her to die in the eventual follow-up. Daredevil was so overstuffed with characters and required plot points that audiences were ultimately detached from the story altogether.

Variety also reported that Fox has continued to keep the property in development over the years so as not to lose it to Marvel Studios to run with. So good luck to Matt Murdock, Foggy Nelson, Ben Urich and the rest as they get their second shot to enrapture audiences with the stories that have kept readers interested for the better part of the last decade when Daredevil experienced a renaissance.