Daredevil’s Charlie Cox could have played Superman

Charlie Cox fought his way into our hearts as the blind superhero Matt Murdock on Netflix’s Daredevil. I remember the first time I sat down to watch the series and immediately knew that I was going to love Cox as this troubled, conflicted superhero.

But long before Cox ever played Daredevil, there was another character he was being considered for: Superman. If you’re like me, your mind is now trying to switch out the Daredevil outfit for Superman’s cape and you just can’t seem to get there.

Speaking with The Aspiring Kryptonian, famed comic book writer Mark Millar talked about this “could have been” situation. Circa 2010, Millar revealed that Stardust director Matthew Vaughan was approached by Warner Bros. about potentially rebooting the Superman franchise. Just to put the timeline into perspective, Zach Synder’s Man of Steel came out in 2013 starring Henry Cavill as the Man of Steel. So obviously, Vaughan didn’t get the gig, nor did Charlie Cox.

“Matthew Vaughn and I had talked about doing a Superman film years ago,” Millar remembered. “It’s funny, I’ve seen so many people say, ‘Millar’s pitch.’ I never wrote a pitch. I had an idea of what it could be, but I never really told Matthew what it was, and Matthew never told DC what it was because he didn’t know.”

So why didn’t discussions get past the idea stage? Well, Millar was working with Marvel at the time Warner Bros. approached Vaughn, and the company may not have wanted to deal with its longtime rival. However, the topic of casting did come up.

"[Matthew] and I had a lot of chats about who could play Superman. We never really talked about story. Weirdly, his idea was really interesting, which was Charlie Cox, the guy who played Daredevil. And Matthew had just worked with Charlie on Stardust a year or two before. And there’s something just really likable about him. He said, ‘I know he’s not big and Superman’s always big’ — like Charlie’s maybe 5’8 or 5’9 or something. He says, ‘He looks a lot like the Golden Age version of Superman, you know when he was a bit more like a regular person.’"

While I don’t really see Charlie Cox as Superman, Vaughn’s concept of Cox as the Golden Age Superman is spot-on. I can see him making a great Clark Kent, especially.

LOS ANGELES, CA – APRIL 02: Actor Charlie Cox attends the Premiere of Netflix’s “Marvel’s Daredevil” at Regal Cinemas L.A. Live on April 2, 2015 in Los Angeles, California. (Photo by Angela Weiss/Getty Images)

But alas, this never came to fruition. Cox may not have ended up being the Man of Steel, but he did become an entirely different, vastly more broody superhero, and gave a performance that we won’t soon forget. Maybe Cox’s Daredevil could return in the next Spider-Man movie or something?

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h/t SYFY Wire