Frank Miller’s DAREDEVIL movie

Looking at unmade science fiction, fantasy, horror and superhero films, television shows and episodes.

BACKGROUND

• Daredevil was created in 1964 by Stan Lee and Bill Everett.
• Seeing potential for the character Frank Miller lobbied Marvel editors to draw the title, taking over in May 1979 but sales remained poor until Miller took over as writer in January 1981 when sales increased rapidly.  Miller left the title in January 1983, but returned for single stories or short arcs and graphic novels in 1985 and 1986.
• The success of Miller’s Batman stories The Dark Knight Returns and Batman: Year One lead to interest from Hollywood, with Miller working on scripts for RoboCop 2 and RoboCop 3.

PLOT

•  The script was a retelling of the origin of the character incorporating many of the elements he created for the title.  Much of the story is leading up to the donning of the costume (as was a common style for super hero films in the 70s to early 90s.)

LEGACY

• Miller adapted his script into the acclaimed comic book mini-series “Daredevil: Man Without Fear” (1993) the last time Miller worked on Daredevil.  It was a 5 issue series (now collected) with a 3 act structure.
• Fox began developing a film in 1997 which, eventually, lead to the 2003 Daredevil film which was also an origin film and did include many of the elements from Miller’s era as a writer.

 ~ DUG.