Chris McKenna Reveals How Daredevil Almost Joined ‘Spider-Man: Brand New Day’

Marvel’s Spider-Man films have spent years teasing closer ties to the street-level heroes of Hell’s Kitchen, fueling constant speculation about when Daredevil might finally cross paths with Peter Parker on the big screen. Those rumors only intensified once reports surfaced that Charlie Cox could be reprising his role in the wall-crawler’s latest outing.

Cox ultimately denied any involvement, and by the time ‘Spider-Man: Brand New Day‘ hit theaters, the character was nowhere to be found. As it turns out, that absence wasn’t the plan from the very beginning.

Chris McKenna has confirmed that Daredevil was featured in an early draft of ‘Spider-Man: Brand New Day,’ revealing the character’s role in a storyline that ultimately never made it to the final film. According to McKenna, the version involved Peter leaving New York City to work as a hero elsewhere before an imposter’s actions back home forced him into an unusual legal battle.

In the scrapped draft, Peter discovers that someone back in New York has been impersonating Spider-Man while he’s away. “He finds out that someone is impersonating Spider-Man back in New York, and he has to come back and prove he’s the real Spider-Man,” McKenna explained, describing a plot that treats Peter’s own identity as something he has to legally defend rather than simply reclaim through combat.

The imposter’s scheme escalated further by trademarking the Spider-Man name and copyrighting the formula for his web fluid, creating a bizarre legal predicament rather than a straightforward superhero showdown. That twist gave the storyline a distinctly different flavor from the action-first approach the finished film ultimately took.

To untangle that legal mess, Peter would have hired Matt Murdock to fight the cease-and-desist notice he received from the very impostor who stole his identity. McKenna described the resulting storyline as “pretty fun, but it was just a different story,” a comment that suggests the idea had real creative merit even though it didn’t ultimately fit the direction the film needed to go.

Bringing Daredevil in purely as legal counsel rather than a costumed ally would have marked a notably grounded, almost comedic use of the character, leaning into his day job as a lawyer rather than his vigilante alter ego. It’s a detail that likely would have delighted longtime comic readers familiar with Murdock’s courtroom background, even if it meant sidelining his crime-fighting side entirely.

The Daredevil subplot wasn’t the only concept that didn’t survive the writing process. Early drafts also considered having Peter accidentally room with the low-level villains Boomerang and Overdrive, along with an international opening sequence that had Spider-Man fighting threats abroad before returning home.

Perhaps the strangest abandoned idea involved a hallucination sequence triggered by appendicitis, featuring a talking bodega cat who discusses the “Spider-Totem” mythology. Taken together, these discarded threads paint a picture of a much stranger, more sprawling film than the one that eventually reached theaters.

It's about to be a Brand New Day. Get tickets now. #SpiderManBrandNewDay is in theatres July 31. pic.twitter.com/rJeJHEfdYV

— Spider-Man Movie (@SpiderManMovie) July 21, 2026

Rather than chasing these elaborate detours, the filmmakers ultimately pivoted toward a more intimate, character-driven story centered on Peter’s isolation following the memory-erasing fallout from ‘No Way Home.’ Destin Daniel Cretton’s finished film instead kept its focus tight on Peter navigating his evolving powers and personal relationships in New York, without the added complication of a trademark dispute or a globe-trotting detour.

That decision left Daredevil out of the picture entirely, despite the filmmakers reportedly coordinating with ‘Daredevil: Born Again’ on shared characters like the Punisher to keep the two properties consistent.

Even without Murdock’s involvement in the finished film, the level of coordination between the two productions suggests Marvel isn’t ruling out a proper crossover somewhere down the line. Cutting a Daredevil-focused storyline for pacing reasons is different from abandoning the character entirely, especially given how carefully the studio has managed continuity between its Spider-Man films and its Hell’s Kitchen-set properties.

For now, fans will have to settle for McKenna’s account of what could have been rather than an actual appearance from Cox’s version of the character.

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