Daredevil film gets writer, plot synopsis

We reported a while back about the core idea behind the new Daredevil film. The only real details we had at the time was that the plan was to create a new original Daredevil story, but not the origin story. The film will not be rebooting the existing films, but will mostly be ignoring those non-canon stories, in favor of a return to the source material.

Fox recently revealed that Brad Caleb Kane will be writing the script. Kane is a veteran Fox writer, having worked on Fringe for its three seasons. He is also, it is rumored, a fan of the Daredevil comics, and so seems a good fit.

Fortunately, Fox released a brief synopsis of the upcoming film:

“The definitive Daredevil tale! Karen Page, Matt Murdock’s former lover, has traded away the Man Without Fear’s secret identity for a drug fix.

“Now, Daredevil must find strength as the Kingpin of Crime wastes no time taking him down as low as a human can get.”

Any Daredevil fan will recognize this as the plot to Born Again, a Frank Miller / David Mazzucchelli scripted Daredevil novel.

If you’re not familiar: Born Again is for Daredevil what Year One is to Batman; not in the sense that it’s a retelling of part of the origin, but that it’s a gritty, very human tale of a part of the hero’s life. This is the point where Matt Murdock hits his lowest, darkest moments, and thus has the greatest, most dramatic climb

Frank Miller’s name alone, of course, rouses anticipation – he also wrote Sin City among other famous graphic novels. I would expect that we’ll see a very noir style, similar to the novel, and that the tones and themes will be darker than the Ben Affleck version of the character.