In a move that isn’t all that surprising, Daredevil season two executive producers and showrunners Douglas Petrie and Marco Ramirez were tapped by Marvel and Netflix to lead their upcoming superhero team-up miniseries, The Defenders. The street-level version of The Avengers will bring together Charlie Cox’s blind vigilante, Krysten Ritter’s titular heroine, Mike Coulter’s impenetrable juggernaut, and Game of Thrones‘ alum Finn Jones’ yet unforeseen fourth party. Taken altogether, the task set before the two men is a very big one that has a lot of money (and eyeballs) riding on it. Which is probably why Drew Goddard, who executive produced Daredevil after giving up the showrunning reigns to Steven DeKnight during pre-production on season one, is coming back to help.
It’s not “all that surprising” since the second season was, give or take a few overly long monologues, quite good. Yet as the more astute observers may have noticed during the opening sequence, the list of people who produced Daredevil got a lot longer sometime between the first and second batches of 13 episodes. I mean, a lot of people produced this show. The 17 names given include:
Consulting producer(s)
– John C. Kelley
Co-executive producer(s)
– Lauren Schmidt Hissrich
– Michael Stricks
Executive producer(s)
– Mark Verheiden
– Cindy Holland
– Alison Engel
– Allie Goss
– Kris Henigman
– Alan Fine
– Joe Quesada
– Stan Lee
– Dan Buckley
– Jim Chory
– Jeph Loeb
– Drew Goddard
– Marco Ramirez
– Douglas Petrie
Lower-level producers generally do much of the grunt work, whereas a handful of those adorned with the title “executive producer” will fall into one of three categories: very important, not so important, and window dressing. It’s safe to say that many of the execs listed above, like Stan Lee, weren’t present in the writers’ room or on set during shooting on a day-to-day basis. But 14 names is still a lot.
With Petrie and Ramirez named specifically as The Defenders‘ showrunners (and ergo, executive producers), and Goddard identified as the miniseries’ executive producer, maybe Marvel and Netflix’s Hell’s Kitchen Avengers won’t have to deal with as many hands in the honey jar as Jon Bernthal’s Punisher and Elodie Yung’s Elektra Natchios did.
No production schedule or possible premiere dates were released with the news. However, according to Daredevil star Cox, there’s as good chance The Defenders will start film before 2016 is out.
(Via Variety)
