After 20th Century Fox had its extension request refused, the studio will have to allow the film rights to the Marvel Comics character Daredevil to revert back to Marvel. Deadline and Variety are reporting that Fox is unable to have their planned reboot in production before the October 10th rights deadline.
This follows on last week's news that Joe Carnahan was being considered to direct the film reboot for Fox after David Slade left the project for the NBC TV series Hannibal. Carnahan posted a comment on Twitter yesterday, remarking "I think my idea for a certain retro, red-suited, Serpico-styled superhero went up in smoke today kids." He followed that with "We shall see. Time is NOT on anyone's side."
Daredevil will be the second character reverting back to Marvel since the company's sale to Disney in 2009. The first was The Punisher, which came from Lionsgate, and leaves Spider-Man (including Venom), The X-Men (including Wolverine), The Fantastic Four, the Silver Surfer, Ghost Rider, Elektra and Deadpool as characters unavailable to Marvel Studios until the other film studios currently holding the movie rights are unable to prove that projects are in active development featuring those characters.
Carnahan continued discussing his Daredevil film ideas on Twitter, saying "DD pitch was tremendous and everyone flipped for it. The clock ticked down at Fox, that's why it went tits up." He also posted two versions of the sizzle reel video he developed to promote his take on the character, which you can view below in "NC-17" and "PG-13" formats: