Nine months after we last heard anything substantial about the studio's film reboot of Marvel Comics' Daredevil, Deadline has reported that David James Kelly has been selected to rewrite the script that Brad Caleb Kane had previously worked on with villains Typhoid Mary and the Purple Man in mind.
David Slade is still slated to direct the reboot, but the film's story will now be drawn from "Born Again," the well-regarded 1986 Daredevil storyline from writer Frank Miller and artist David Mazzucchelli.
In the story, Matt Murdock's former secretary Karen Page has fallen on hard times, becoming a pornographic movie star and heroin addict. Desperate to feed her addiction, she sells her knowledge of Daredevil's secret identity, which ultimately gets back to Daredevil's arch-enemy The Kingpin. The Kingpin, of course, uses the information to ruin Matt Murdock's life piece by piece, to the point where he becomes mentally unbalanced, homeless and destitute.
Fox's decision to run with "Born Again" brings things full circle from 2006, when director Mark Steven Johnson showed interest in using the storyline for a sequel to his 2003 film Daredevil that starred Ben Affleck as Matt Murdock and Michael Clarke Duncan as the Kingpin. At the time, Duncan also expressed interest in returning to his role, but it seems unlikely he will return for a reboot.