Even before Daredevil: Born Again was officially announced last year at SDCC, speculation about its potential direction took the Marvel fan corner of the internet by storm. We’ve previously reported exclusively about the show’s working title and production company. We now have some updates on the screenwriters behind the Man Without Fear’s latest foray into television. While researching for Daredevil: Born Again’s writers, we appear to have found a few that were previously unknown, to add to the few that were. Learn more in our breakdown below.
The magic number is 18
Daredevil: Born Again received an 18-episode order. This is rare for the binge-friendly serialized streaming world but even more remarkable because Marvel’s longest Disney+ TV show was WandaVision, with nine episodes.
You could count Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., but you would have to ignore the fact that the show was on ABC and not streaming. In that case, Marvel does have some experience with the old 22-episode season of the network TV model. But it’s been a while. When the Daredevil episode count was announced, fans were excited.
The streaming model has led to changes in how television shows are typically written and produced. Whereas in the before times, when shows had more episodes, it was common for a room to be still open and running while the show was filming. Smaller rooms and fewer episodes in this streaming era mean that some television shows have been totally written, and the rooms are closed even before a frame is shot.
An interesting mix of Daredevil: Born Again writers
While we were waiting for more information about this series filming this year, we decided to look for and at some of the writers that make up the room that will come up with those stories.
To television writers, the writer’s room is a sacred space. A showrunner must ensure the room has a great mix of writers with experience, talent, personalities, perspectives, special knowledge, and more. From what we can tell, the Daredevil: Born Again writers are a great mix.
David Feige
According to our research, attorney David Feige is one of the writers of Daredevil: Born Again. Feige has a ton of real-life experience as a lawyer and also writes for lawyers and law shows on TV. Feige was a public defender in NYC and even started a nonprofit bail organization, The Bronx Freedom Fund. He also wrote a memoir about his work and life, Indefensible: One Lawyer’s Journey into the Inferno of American Justice.
Feige is probably best known in the world of TV for co-creating the super-successful TNT series Raising the Bar. Recently, he was an executive producer and writer on For Life. For Life was on ABC and was canceled in 2021, but it had an interesting premise.
According to a logline for the show on IMDB, For Life centered on “A prisoner becomes a lawyer and fights to overturn his life sentence for a crime he didn’t commit.” The show was loosely based on the true story of Isaac Wright, Jr. Feige also wrote for the shows The Firm and Drop Dead Diva.
Thomas Wong
Thomas Wong is another writer we’ve confirmed for the Daredevil: Born Again room. According to his WGA profile, Wong has expertise in a number of issues, including race/ethnic issues, food/wine, sexuality/gender, and the legal system/courtroom procedures.
Wong has written for Minority Report and Good Trouble but has the most experience writing for the CBS show Bull, starring Michael Weatherly. Bull was a legal drama about a jury consultant that was a staple of the CBS lineup for many years.
Before writing for TV, Wong was a NY lawyer and even sold luxury real estate in Manhattan. Wong earned several prestigious writing fellowships as part of his TV writing journey.
Jill Blankenship
Jill Blankenship is a veteran superhero writer and also a member of the Daredevil: Born Again team. She was the showrunner and co-creator for Naomi, which was about a teenage superhero fan who discovers she has powers herself.
Blankenship also wrote for Arrow and The Last Ship. She’s an alum of the WGA showrunner training program. Arrow fans might recognize the name because she wrote, along with Marc Guggenheim and Beth Schwartz & Oscar Balderrama, the episode of the show that was a backdoor pilot for the spinoff Green Arrow and the Canaries. The show was, unfortunately, a pandemic casualty and would have taken place in Star City in 2040 and followed Mia Smoak, the daughter of Oliver Queen and Felicity Smoak.
Zachary Reiter
Zach Reiter has both a New York background and a law background. He’s also got significant television franchises, including Law & Order: Organized Crime and CSI: New York, under his belt. And now, according to the WGA, he’s working for Daredevil too.
According to a Deadline article discussing his career before CSI: NY and his overall deal with CBS Studios, Reiter was a prosecutor in Queens. As an ADA, he worked on homicide investigations. Reiter has a strong family connection in the industry. His brother, Lukas Reiter, ran The Firm, one of the shows that David Feige also wrote for.
Grainne Godfree
Grainne Godfree, like Jill Blankenship, is another writer who should be well-known to fans of the Arrowverse and DC. She wrote for Arrow, The Flash, and 20 episodes of DC’s Legends of Tomorrow. Godfree even co-show ran the CW show.
In 2020, Deadline reported that Godfree would write and executive produce Jennifer Lynn Barnes’ The Inheritance Games. Godfree also signed the WGA pledge asking for animation writers to be treated the same as live-action writers.
Devon Kliger
Devon Kliger is a former development executive turned screenwriter. In 2017, the screenwriter’s script was on the industry hot list, The Black List. Each year the coverage site releases a list of its buzziest scripts that haven’t yet been produced. Kliger and writing partner Daniel Persitz wrote a script called Key of Genius. According to the logline, Key of Genius is “The true story of Derek Paravicini, a blind, severely autistic boy who needed an incredible teacher to help realize his world-class musical ability.”
Interestingly, Kliger and his writing partner Persitz also wrote a script in 2016 for Hasbro about the Furby. The film was supposed to be a mix of live-action and CG and would be made by TWC-Dimension, but it never seemed to get off the ground.
Aisha Porter-Christie
Deadline reported recently that writer/director Aisha Porter-Christie was also on the team as a consulting producer. Porter-Christie has written for Orphan Black, Shadowhunters, Briarpatch, and the upcoming The Boys’ spinoff Gen V.
Porter-Christie is currently developing a show called Clifton, based on the YA book Running Out of Time. She grew up in rural Jamaica, and her short films have received many accolades and awards. Interestingly, she’s also working on The Girls on the Bus with Daredevil showrunners Ord and Corman.
The showrunners of Daredevil: Born Again
Chris Ord and Matt Corman are helming the show. They’re best known for the USA Network hit Covert Affairs. The two have been expectedly quiet about the direction of the show.
They are experienced in showrunning, having gotten more than 100 episodes of tv on the air. They also show ran Containment, The Brave, and The Enemy Within. They’ve showcased strong women characters in their writing. Outside of Daredevil, the duo is working on a project called The Girls on the Bus, starring Melissa Benoist, about women presidential campaign journalists.
What does this mean for the story in Daredevil: Born Again?
Ultimately, we won’t know the answer to that until the show is out, but Charlie Cox told GQ recently that there would be more of a courtroom focus.
“I think because of the number of episodes they’ve committed to, there’ll be a heavy influence of courtroom stuff — Matt Murdoch, the lawyer in the new show. So I’m heavily focused on researching that area of this character and his life. It was one of the areas we didn’t do a huge amount exploration around before.” – Charlie Cox to GQ, 12/27/2022
If you look at the writers above, there seems to be a lot of legal know-how and strength, so that certainly seems possible. In August of last year, Cosmic Circus writer Tucker Watkins shared his thoughts on where the Daredevil season could land based on the Chip Zdarsky comic run.
It’s clear that this group of writers is massively accomplished and mega-talented. It’ll be exciting to see what the Daredevil: Born Again writers come up with for the devil of Hell’s Kitchen.
We’ll keep our ear to the ground for news about the episodes and the season, as well as about filming when it begins. And if you want to know some of our thoughts about what everything we know could mean for Daredevil: Born Again, be sure to check out our recent podcast where Ayla Ruby, Brian Kitson, and Anthony Flagg chatted all about it.
Are you excited about Daredevil: Born Again? Please join the conversation and share your thoughts with us on Twitter @MyCosmicCircus.
Sources: WGA / Deadline: Aisha Porter-Christie Signs with CAA / GQ interview with Charlie Cox / Vulture The 2017 Blacklist Revealed / Coming Soon: Green Arrow and the Canaries not moving forward
Cosmic Circle Ep. 17: Future Daredevil – The Story Continues
