While fans are enjoying the R-rated feel of Netflix’s Daredevil series, there was once an attempt to bring Daredevil’s grittiness to the big screen with a Fox film that may have done for the Scarlet Swashbuckler what Deadpool did for the Merc with a Mouth.

As Screen Crush explains, nearly ten years after the generally unloved Ben Affleck Daredevil movie, and after the even less loved Elektra spinoff, Fox was on the clock to put a new Daredevil project into production or else lose the rights to Marvel Studios. They enlisted Joe Carnahan, director of The A-Team and The Grey, who had a vision of a hard-R Daredevil movie set in the 1970s.

I suggested a trilogy as follows. ‘Daredevil ‘73’ ‘Daredevil ‘79’ and ‘Daredevil ‘85’ where I was going to do a kind of ‘cultural libretto’ and make the music of those eras a kind of thematic arc . So the first one would be Classic Rock, the second one would be Punk Rock and the third film would be ‘New Wave.’

Carnahan even mocked up an NC-17 sizzle reel - using altered footage from the first Daredevil movie, art from Daredevil comics, and borrowing some footage from other films – as a proof of concept. Check it out below.

The film never got off the ground.. Fox couldn’t make the October 10 deadline, and Marvel wouldn’t negotiate for more time, despite supposedly being offered Galactus and Silver Surfer in return. Marvel took back the rights to Daredevil and made the deal with Netflix. Carnahan’s vision remains a “could have been.”

Marvel’s Daredevil Season 2 is now available to stream on Netflix.

Via Screen Crush