The Defenders

[GeneChing]

DareDevil
Jessica Jones
Luke Cage
Iron Fist

[Jimbo]

IMO, The Defenders was the most unstable, fluid superhero team of all. I remember back in the '70s, the original Defenders were Dr. Strange, Hulk and Sub-Mariner. Later they added The Valkyrie, Luke Cage, and others. Heroes came and went. There was also an Avengers vs. Defenders storyline at one point.

In this new lineup, Luke Cage is the only one I recall as a Defender. Possibly Daredevil was at some point, but I'm not certain.

[GeneChing]

[GeneChing]

[GeneChing]

Iron Fist was such a buzz kill that I don't feel invested in this at all. But then I never finished any of the series. I'm just not that into comic book heroes.

JUNE 22, 2017 8:48am PT by Josh Wigler
Marvel's Netflix Heroes Stand Strong In First 'Defenders' Key Art


Courtesy of Netflix

New York's finest superheroes get together in an all-new look at the Netflix series.

Years ago, when Marvel first announced its television partnership with Netflix, diehard fans began wondering what it would look like when the expansive universe's veritable street-level Avengers finally assembled.

Since that announcement, we've come a long way: two seasons of Daredevil, and one season a piece for Jessica Jones, Luke Cage and Iron Fist. After so many hours spent with these characters, they've started to feel like old friends — and the official key art for Marvel's The Defenders emphasizes that exact feeling, coming off more like a high school reunion than a superhero team-up.

Check out the image below.


Courtesy of Netflix

Marvel's The Defenders is the culmination of several different seasons and series of television, featuring the likes of Matt Murdock (Charlie Cox), Jessica Jones (Krysten Ritter) and Luke Cage (Mike Colter) teaming for the first time. Oh, and Danny Rand (Finn Jones) is also in the mix. Did you know his name is Danny Rand? It's possible that you didn't. In any case, he's definitely here as well, and he's definitely Danny Rand.

What are the four heroes (including Danny) going up against? Details remain sketchy, though most signs point toward The Hand, the mysterious organization that's haunted many of these characters, including Claire Temple (Rosario Dawson), the professional superhero healer with unique individual ties to each of the Defenders. (Here's hoping Claire doesn't become the Marvel Netflix Universe's answer to Agent Coulson — aka the beloved figure who gets killed off in order to bind the heroes together.) Speculation surrounding Sigourney Weaver's unknown antagonist places her as the leader of the ancient order, but we won't know for sure until the series drops Aug. 18.

[sanjuro_ronin]

I am simply hoping that they learned from all that was sub-par with Iron Fist and have fixed it.
One more mediocre outing and it may be the end for marvel netflix series.

[GeneChing]

‘Daredevil’ Canceled By Netflix After 3 Seasons; Future In Other Marvel Projects
by Nellie Andreeva and Dominic Patten
November 29, 2018 5:43pm


Netflix

EXCLUSIVE: The ax continues to fall on Marvel’s series at Netflix. Daredevil, which launched the Marvel universe on the streaming platform, has been canceled after three seasons. The move comes on the heels of Netflix canceling Iron Fist and Luke Cage last month – but Daredevil seems to have an afterlife elsewhere.

“Marvel’s Daredevil will not return for a fourth season on Netflix,” the streamer said in a statement tonight to Deadline. “We are tremendously proud of the show’s last and final season and although it’s painful for the fans, we feel it best to close this chapter on a high note.””We’re thankful to our partners at Marvel, showrunner Erik Oleson, the show’s writers, stellar crew and incredible cast including Charlie Cox as Daredevil himself, and we’re grateful to the fans who have supported the show over the years,” Netflix added just a month after the third season of the series launched on the service.

However, unlike Iron Fist or Luke Cage, the door seems to be wide open for the blind protector of NYC’s Hell’s Kitchen, perhaps on the upcoming Disney+ streaming platform.

“While the series on Netflix has ended, the three existing seasons will remain on the service for years to come, while the Daredevil character will live on in future projects for Marvel,” Netflix said also.

With The Defenders never intended to return beyond its 2017 miniseries run and Iron Fist and Luke Cage dropped, the cancellation of Daredevil so soon after its highly anticipated and acclaimed third season was released, now leaves only two Marvel series on Netflix, Jessica Jones and The Punisher.

Whether those “future” projects means Cox’s Daredevil makes an appearance with his Defenders colleague or the Jon Bernthal led vigilante series remains to be seen. A Daredevil series on the planned Disney streaming platform or another movie could be an option too, though the latter seems unlikely, we hear.

The era of Marvel TV on Netflix seems to be coming to an end at the same time Disney is revving up its own streaming service with already announced Loki and Scarlett Witch series for Disney+ coming from Marvel’s Kevin Feige led film division. For now, the upcoming new seasons of Jessica Jones and The Punisher are still currently scheduled to run on Netflix as planned, sources say.

Overall, the cancellation of the series starring Cox and Vincent D’Onofrio, who had been tweeting about a fourth season in the past few weeks, shows just how strained relations between Netflix and the Jeph Loeb run Marvel TV have become. A far cry from when their multi-series deal was first announced back in 2013 with big smiles and almost bigger plans.

The current state of affairs became painfully evident when the SVOD player abruptly pulled the plug on a third season of Luke Cage last month. One week after Iron Fist was pink slipped, that October 19 cancellation of Harlem’s Hero came after the nearly half scripts had been written for a Season 3 and a formal renewal had been considered a foregone conclusion.

The fact is times have changed on the digital landscape and Marvel shows on Netflix are costly to make, even with New York’s generous tax credits, which had an extra clause added to accommodate the series. When the initial deal with Marvel/Disney was made by Netflix five years ago, the company, desperate to gain big draw content, laid out big bucks for the series – which it never owned. Now the situation is very different, with Netflix awash in new series and returning series that it holds the keys to.

In that context, Netflix and Marvel TV have also been arguing over the season orders and that may have played a role in Daredevil’s demise, as it did Luke Cage‘s. Being part of the first wave of Netflix original series, all Marvel series have produced 13-episode seasons. But Netflix has since switched to seasons of 10 episodes and has been pressuring Marvel TV to switch to fewer episodes, which the company had been resisting.

There also have been creative issues, with a revolving door of showrunners on Marvel’s Netflix shows. There have been new showrunners for every season of Daredevil, with Iron Fist and Jessica Jones’ also undergoing a showrunner change.

BTW – No official return date for The Punisher or Jessica Jones has been made public by either Marvel or Netflix.

I'm thinking this will all migrate to Disney+ next - Daredevil, Defenders, the whole lot (maybe - hopefully - NOT Danny Rand )

[GeneChing]

Actually, two years isn't that long for Disney+, especially considering the rest of the line-up they've got queued. 2020 may be just about right.

DECEMBER 12, 2018 1:45PM PT
Don’t Expect ‘The Defenders’ on Disney Streaming Service Any Time Soon (EXCLUSIVE)
By JOE OTTERSON
Joe Otterson
TV Reporter
@JoeOtterson


CREDIT: NETFLIX
Fans of the Marvel Television series recently canceled by Netflix who hope to see the shows revived on Disney+ may be out of luck.

Sources tell Variety that the deal for the original four Marvel shows includes a clause that prevents the characters from appearing in any non-Netflix series or film for at least two years after cancellation. That means that “Daredevil,” “Luke Cage,” and “Iron Fist” — which were all canceled this year at Netflix — could not come to the Disney streaming service until 2020 at the earliest.

The chances of the shows returning either on their own or as a new installment of “The Defenders” is definitely a long shot, given the time frame. And even if they did go to Disney+ as soon as possible, they would be doing so without “Jessica Jones,” which is set to air its third season on Netflix sometime in 2019. If that show is canceled, which now seems likely but is by no means a guarantee, it could not go elsewhere until 2021.

Marvel and Netflix declined to comment.

Then there is “The Punisher,” a Marvel-Netflix show that was not part of the deal that spawned “The Defenders.” “The Punisher” stars Jon Bernthal, who first played the gun-toting vigilante in “Daredevil” Season 2 before the character was spun off into his own show. It was revealed on Wednesday that the second season of “The Punisher” will debut in January. Given that “The Punisher” did not fall under the original deal, the show’s fate beyond Season 2 is unknown at this time.

Fans of the Marvel shows were shocked when Netflix began canceling them, particularly “Daredevil,” which drew strong critical praise for its third season. The streaming giant and the comic book-based entertainment studio had signed the deal to produce the four shows back in November 2013, with “Daredevil” being the first to premiere in April 2015.

The deal called for the development of four original live-action series, which would then culminate in the miniseries event “The Defenders,” which ended up airing in 2017. However, Disney announced its plans for Disney+ in 2017, with the intent being to make it a hub for everything under the Disney umbrella, which includes Marvel.

The soon-to-be-streaming giant has already lined up several original shows, including limited series centered on the Marvel Cinematic Universe characters Loki, Scarlet Witch, and Falcon and the Winter Solider. Disney+ will also be home to the live-action “Star Wars” shows “The Mandalorian” starring Pedro Pascal and a Cassian Andor series, with Diego Luna reprising his role from “Rogue One.”

I'm thinking this will all migrate to Disney+ next - Daredevil, Defenders, the whole lot (maybe - hopefully - NOT Danny Rand )

Called that wrong...

[GeneChing]

Time to start a Disney+ thread.

I'm thinking this will all migrate to Disney+ next - Daredevil, Defenders, the whole lot (maybe - hopefully - NOT Danny Rand )

Opinion
THE DAREDEVIL-VERSE LOOKS TO BE THE UNFORTUNATE CASUALTY OF DISNEY’S LARGER STREAMING AMBITIONS
Contributed by Trent Moore
@trentlmoore
Nov 30, 2018

First, we said goodbye to Iron Fist. Then a few weeks later, Luke Cage left the mean streets of Harlem. Now, the OG Marvel Netflix series is officially gone, as Netflix has announced there are no plans for a fourth season of hallway fights on Daredevil. As Disney prepares to launch its own full-scale streaming service, Disney+, the studio’s six former flagship series on Netflix look to be caught in the middle — and they’re quickly dropping like flies.

It’s easy to forget that just a few years ago, these were some of the buzziest comic projects to ever hit the small screen. Marvel and Netflix announced plans for the ambitious Marvel's The Defenders co-production in late 2013, with Daredevil, Luke Cage, Iron Fist, and Jessica Jones on tap alongside the crossover miniseries. Five years later, and only The Punisher (a Daredevil spinoff) and Jessica Jones are still standing. Both of the remaining series have one season in the can and are still awaiting premiere dates, but judging by the massacre we’ve seen up to this point, those will likely be the final seasons we see of those heroes, too (if we see them at all).

It’s a shame, as every one of these shows pushed the boundaries for what you could do in the comic book genre. Luke Cage told a grounded story about what it’s like to be black in America, from the perspective of a bulletproof hero; Daredevil was the story of a damaged man trying to reconcile his faith with his mission; and Iron Fist found its footing in its second season, and actually gifted Colleen Wing with the glowing punch of power. If Netflix eventually pulls the plug on Jessica Jones, too, it’ll take away one of the few headlining female heroes on both the big and small screens.

Netflix and Marvel used these street-level heroes to tell smaller-scale stories that stood in stark contrast to the world-ending stakes we’d seen up to that point in films such as Iron Man and Thor. These folks weren’t fighting to save the world — they were fighting to save their neighborhoods. And those fights? They had consequences. Daredevil nursed bruises the morning after, while Jessica Jones often nursed a hangover.

If the Avengers were saving the world, the Defenders were actually living in it. People noticed, too, as pretty much every series (the atrocious first season of Iron Fist notwithstanding) typically received solid reviews and critical acclaim.

Despite all that, the landscape has changed considerably since Marvel and Netflix joined hands on stage to announce what was (at the time) one of the most ambitious undertakings in TV history.


Credit: Netflix

Disney has spent the past few years laying the foundation for its own streaming service that is set to leverage its massive content and IP library to directly compete with Netflix — which makes any deal between the two companies a whole lot more awkward than it was just a few years prior. Given the option of keeping everything in-house (most notably the profits), or sharing it with another service, the answer is obvious for Disney. It’s the reason all those superhero movies will be leaving Netflix for Disney+ once it launches, and why Disney is ramping up its own slate of original series — including everything from Star Wars to Pixar shows — to anchor Disney+.

Disney+ will also feature more than a few Marvel Studios originals, which looks to be where things started to come apart for Daredevil and his fellow heroes.

With Disney looking to differentiate its own streaming service from what has come before, the House of Mouse is going way bigger than street-level heroes. Shows based on film characters such as Loki, Scarlet Witch, and the Winter Soldier and Falcon are all in development, which makes it pretty clear the offerings of Disney+ are meant to be on the same level as the MCU flicks that dominate the box office. Strategically, it’s a smart move for Disney; Disney+ is supposed to be something bigger and better than what fans have seen before. It’s also great for fans, as they'll get bigger stories in a new way. That’s not a bad thing, inherently.

But it also seems to be skipping past what has come before, including all the great things fans loved about the Daredevil-verse. Disney may want to go movie-level with its new shows, but that seems to be coming at the price of the street-level stories fans still want to see, too.



Could Disney bring Daredevil, Luke Cage, and Iron Fist over to Disney+ with new seasons and new shows or TV movies? It’s certainly possible, though early reports note it’s not all that likely — at least not now. Disney is, understandably, trying to look forward as it launches a new service. To complicate things, Netflix has the rights to those original seasons, so any potential revival on Disney+ would not feature the back catalog of episodes unless the two streaming services come to an agreement. And with Disney looking to consolidate everything under one roof, splitting focus would defeat the purpose. Everything we’ve seen implies Disney wants new shows, new projects, new buzz.

Marvel is going big with Disney+, but perhaps at the cost of the small stories fans have fallen in love with.

It doesn’t mean Marvel won’t still use those characters somewhere eventually, though. Who knows? There could be a new Marvel show at Disney+ down the line bringing some of those characters back, or even some super-cameos in the upcoming two seasons of Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. Not to mention Marvel shows such as Runaways at Hulu (which Disney owns a stake in) and Cloak and Dagger at Freeform (which Disney owns) could also get in on the action.

There are plenty of options, but at least for now, these characters and shows don’t seem to be a major piece of Disney’s puzzle.