Things are moving quickly for Marvel’s upcoming Daredevil series on Netflix. Just a few days after changing showrunners on the project, Marvel announced the identity of its lead actor for the 13-episode series, which will debut in 2015.
British actor Charlie Cox will take on the role of Matt Murdock, who lost his sense of sight as a child but had the rest of his senses enhanced to superhuman levels. A lawyer by day in New York City’s neighborhood of Hell’s Kitchen, Murdock fights crime as the costumed vigilante Daredevil by night.
Cox is probably best known for his role in the popular television series Boardwalk Empire, as well as his starring role in the 2007 fantasy film Stardust, which was co-written and directed by Matthew Vaughn (X-Men: First Class) and based on a novel by Neil Gaiman.
Along with announcing the casting of Cox, Marvel.com also offered up some confirmation of the series’ modern-day setting, which was the subject of speculation given the continuity of Marvel’s cinematic universe and the evolution of the Hell’s Kitchen neighborhood since the character was first introduced. When the character Daredevil was created by Stan Lee and Bill Everett in 1964, the Hell’s Kitchen neighborhood was a notoriously rough area of New York City. Now, the neighborhood is regarded as one of the city’s more trendy (and relatively safe) hotspots.
Marvel’s Daredevil will be the first of four 13-episode interconnected miniseries’ produced for Netflix, with a fifth miniseries planned that will bring the stars of the previous series’ — Daredevil, Jessica Jones, Luke Cage, and Iron Fist — together for a team-up as The Defenders.
