Director David Slade and screenwriter Brad Caleb Kane, the creators behind the Daredevil film reboot, went on Twitter to give some updates on the project and may have revealed the villains slated to appear. ComicBookMovie.com captured the various Twitter posts yesterday, which provided the following comments of note...
@bradcalebkane Beware purple men and typhus.
@bradcalebkane Me and Slade cooking up lotsa fun surprises for DD. And most importantly, not talking down to the fans. Rich themes, complex story...
@bradcalebkane Watching lots of Sidney Lumet for inspiration.
The "purple men and typhus" comments certainly seem blatant references to the Daredevil villains the Purple Man and Typhoid Mary. The Purple Man is Zebediah Killgrave, an international spy doused with a chemical that turned him purple and gave him the ability to produce chemical pheremones that control the actions of others against their will. Typhoid Mary, meanwhile, is a mutant who suffers from dissociative identity disorder and possesses limited psionic powers, including telekinesis and pyrokinesis.
The shout-out to the recently deceased director Sidney Lumet most likely refers to Lumet's preference for New York City settings and emphasis on issues of social justice in such films as Serpico, Dog Day Afternoon, Network and The Verdict.
It seems as though the tone of this rebooted film may be grittier and more substantive than the 2003 film starring Ben Affleck, Jennifer Garner and Colin Farrell. And since former Daredevil writer Brian Michael Bendis has put a fresh spin on both characters in recent years in the collections Daredevil: Hardcore and Alias: The Secret Origin of Jessica Jones, it wouldn't surprise me if those two collections are possible reference material for the script.
The Daredevil reboot isn't currently listed on Slade's IMDB page, but studio 20th Century Fox's rights to the Daredevil characters will expire at the end of 2012 and revert back to Marvel if they don't release another film. With Slade and Kane working on the script, something tells me we're about to get some casting news soon...