Marvel is no stranger to powerhouse collaborations — look at next month’s Avengers: Age of Ultron — but its most promising, game-changing partnership this year has nothing to do with Iron Man and Captain America. Instead, it kicks off tomorrow, when its new TV series, Marvel’s Daredevil, debuts on Netflix. As I wrote at Quartz,

Bringing together Marvel and Netflix, Marvel’s Daredevil, which debuts its thrilling 13-episode first season on Netflix April 10, ushers in an Avengers-level teaming up of Hollywood titans. In the past few years, no two companies have changed the entertainment landscape as much as Marvel (now every studio is pursuing its own version of the Marvel Cinematic Universe) and Netflix (which between pioneering binge-watching and creating groundbreaking shows like Orange is the New Black, has knocked every other network on its heels). Now they are at it again, devising an exciting new path for the crowded TV superhero genre.

And the series — the first of five Marvel/Netflix shows that will culminate in Marvel’s The Defenders, an Avengers-like teamup of its “street-level heroes” — is fantastic:

Unlike the other TV superhero series, Daredevil is aimed at grownups—or, at least, not the kids who watch much of Netflix’s other superhero fare. Karen Paige (Deborah Ann Woll from True Blood), the firm’s first client turned secretary, notes that after the violent events of the first episode, “I don’t see the city anymore. All I see are its dark corners.” And that is where Daredevil lives: the show employs a very dark palette (after all, Murdock doesn’t need lights). While Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. and Marvel’s Agent Carter are glitzy and glossy, this one is gritty and grimy. An early episode features a brutal, gruesome decapitation; not something you’d find on any broadcast TV show.

But where Daredevil—which erases all memories of the mediocre 2003 film with Ben Affleck—really shines is in its inventive action sequences, particularly an ingeniously executed, prolonged fight sequence late in the second episode. It feels real, and brutal. You can see superheroes fighting back guys all over TV, but nowhere else does it feel this visceral.

Marvel and Netflix still have a long road ahead, but they couldn’t have asked for a better start to their partnership than Daredevil. Don’t miss the series when it debuts tomorrow!

Inside Netflix and Marvel’s titanic team up on Daredevil

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As Marvel’s Agent Carter wrapped its brisk, eight-episode first season in fine form last night, I spoke with Marvel’s head of television, Jeph Loeb, for this Daily Beast story about what’s on tap for the company next (five upcoming Netflix series, starting with Marvel’s Daredevil) and why Agent Carter was able to immediately connect with audiences in a way that Agents of SHIELD did not last season.

From its outset, Agent Carter received a much more enthusiastic response from audiences than S.H.I.E.L.D., which Loeb attributes to confusion over what exactly S.H.I.E.L.D. was when it premiered in fall 2013. “There were certain expectations about S.H.I.E.L.D. that people had,” he says. “Despite the fact that we had a very strong message out there which is ‘not all heroes are super,’ I still think people came to the show thinking that the Hulk was going to be in the first episode and Iron Man was going to be in the second episode and Cap was going to be in the third episode. But once they got into the show and realized, ‘Oh, look at all these characters and look at this world and look at what we’re getting out of it,’ then they were ready to get into the show and take it where it was. With Carter, there was no misinformation. It was: Here she is, this is the world that we’re in.”

And even with seven Marvel series on-air and in the pipelione, Loeb doesn’t think the market is oversaturated yet:

“There’ll always be room to expand. This isn’t about which shows we’re doing. It really is about, ‘What’s the best story?’ We’ve never chosen any of our shows based on a particular need as much as the stories that we want to tell and how they can work both to help build out the brand, and at the same time help build out the storytelling that we’re doing,” he says. “Part of the reason why the Netflix shows happened was because we’ve wanted to be able to tell the stories of the street-level heroes, and that was a better fit for that network than what we were doing over at ABC. That doesn’t mean that there aren’t other shows at either network that wouldn’t be fun and exciting to do.”

Check out the rest of the interview, in which Loeb reveals which Marvel actor is already begging for a Daredevil cameo, how Marvel keeps track of all the characters in the Marvel Cinematic Universe and which films/shows they’ve appeared on and why the company’s TV moves aren’t a response to whatever rival DC is doing.

Marvel’s TV Takeover: Television Chief Jeph Loeb on What’s Next After ‘Agent Carter’

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Back in May, I wrote about how Marvel’s Agents of SHIELD had finally found its way. As the show prepares to kick off Season 2, I spoke with its two showrunners, Jed Whedon and Maurissa Tancharoen for this Daily Beast interview about balancing secrecy and spoilers, what they learned from Season 1’s rocky start and which Marvel Universe characters will (and won’t) be making appearances this season. After having her hands tied for much of last season, being forced to keep quiet about, and then react to, the big reveal from Captain America: The Winter Solider, Tancharoen talks about the freedom of Season 2:

Well, we have a very clear big bad. We have Hydra. It’s very nice and liberating to say “Hydra” and have it out in the open! Last season was definitely challenging, because we were not allowed to mention them or allude to a mole of any kind. So now, coming into Season 2, we exist in a new paradigm. S.H.I.E.L.D. and Hydra are viewed as one and the same.  So we’re putting our characters through a different sort of journey, where they still want to be out there and helping the world and the people through this world, but they have to do it from the shadows.

They also discuss the possible return of Cobie Smulders as Maria Hill, Joss Whedon’s level in involvement in the show and — something of particular interest to me — if they will can finally take the periods out of SHIELD (which is something that I’ve already done on this site).

The Leaner, Meaner Season 2 of ‘Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.’

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It’s upfronts time once again: the annual week in which broadcast execs unveil their new TV lineups to advertisers. And as I wrote at Quartz, as networks grapple with season-to-season ratings decline, they are trying a new tactic: approaching their lineups as if they are summer movie schedules.

The networks are coming to the same conclusion as the movie studios: the best way to potentially attract huge audiences, both domestically and internationally, is by relying on “safe” projects featuring well-established, beloved brands. That’s a big reason why Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. was one of the few new series to get a renewal this year.

And if a network picks up my NCIS: Avengers idea, I’d better get a cut of the profits!

Television is taking a cue from summer movie blockbusters

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One day after making my Quartz debut, I’m back with this look at the new ABC series Marvel’s Agents of SHIELD, which has the daunting task of trying to save Disney’s slumping ABC. As I wrote,

ABC hopes that S.H.I.E.L.D. will rescue the beleaguered network from its ratings doldrums—for the past two seasons, it’s been last place in the advertiser-coveted adults 18-49 demographic among the four broadcast networks—and give it a legitimate chance to finally expand beyond the network’s female-skewing programming like Scandal, Revenge and Grey’s Anatomy.

I was also able to share some insight from star Clark Gregg and executive producer Jeph Loeb that I had picked up at TCA summer press tour. ABC and Marvel have a tough road ahead of them, but I wouldn’t bet against the company that racked up $1.51 billion worldwide with The Avengers.

Marvel’s next mission: conquer primetime television, and save Disney’s ABC Network

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