20 Years After Ben Affleck’s ‘Daredevil,’ Its Director Admits He Over-Crammed the Story and Got ‘A Lot of Blowback’ for Kingpin Casting

variety.com:

Zack Sharf As of Valentine’s Day 2023, Ben Affleck’s often-mocked comic book movie “Daredevil” is 20 years old. Yahoo Entertainment marked the occasion by sitting down with the 2003 comic book movie’s director, Mark Steven Johnson, who admitted that part of the movie’s failure came from his decision to over-cram the story. “Looking back on it, one of the mistakes I made with the film was wanting to put everything in!” Johnson said. “I wanted to do Daredevil’s origin story, and I wanted to do the Elektra Saga and I wanted to introduce Bullseye and Foggy.

I wanted everything to be in there, but the film could only support so much. And then when you’re told to cut a half-hour out and and make it more of a love story, things start to feel rushed and not quite right.

It’s a fan thing: when you love something so much, you want to tell it all.” “Daredevil” starred Affleck in the title role opposite Jennifer Garner as Elektra, Michael Clarke Duncan as Kingpin, Colin Farrell as Bullseye and Jon Favreau as Foggy.

The movie, released by 20th Century Fox, did not impress film critics but still made $179 million at the box office, which was good enough to give Garner her 2005 spinoff movie “Elektra.” Johnson said the plan was to make a second “Daredevil” movie after “Elektra,” but the latter’s $57 million gross made it a box office bomb and effectively killed the franchise.