Brand New Day Almost Put Daredevil in a Trademark Suit

Chris McKenna said an early Spider-Man: Brand New Day draft had Peter Parker hiring Matt Murdock to fight a trademarked imposter. The lawyer would not have remembered his client. Kevin Feige sat in the room and laughed anyway.

The finished film, directed by Destin Daniel Cretton and released in the United States on July 31, 2026, kept the loneliness and dropped the lawsuit. McKenna and writing partner Erik Sommers told the unused story on The Bulwark Goes to Hollywood and on Script Apart in mid-September, after the movie had already become a giant hit.

An Imposter Copyrighted the Spider-Man Brand

McKenna described a Peter so done with New York, and with his own past, that he left. He lived on a boat in Southeast Asia, fixed the engine, mixed his own web fluid, and took down gangs. Then a video reached him. Another Spider-Man was back home, charming fans.

“What? There’s some imposter in New York,” McKenna recalled Peter thinking. The fake was wearing the suit and using the web fluid. He had also done the one thing Holland’s Peter had never managed. He had copyrighted the Spider-Man brand, trademarked it, and kept a supply of webbing on hand.

Then he had to hire Matt Murdock as a lawyer to help him fight. Because Peter Parker gets a cease-and-desist from this other guy. ‘You can’t pretend that you’re Spider-Man.’ And so it began this whole thing that was pretty fun, but it was just a different story.

Chris McKenna, screenwriter, on The Bulwark Goes to Hollywood

The real hero would have been the defendant in his own myth. The courtroom got sillier from there. McKenna remembered a line about not being allowed to leave while still wearing the suit. He said they knew, even while they were having a good time, that they probably could not make that movie.

Feige did not shut it down on the spot. “He was in the room and enjoying it,” McKenna said. “Believe me, it’s a tight team.”

The full Script Apart conversation, the one that frames Brand New Day as a courtroom comedy that never happened, is here:

Why Matt Murdock Would Not Remember Peter

Charlie Cox’s Matt Murdock had already been Peter’s lawyer. In Spider-Man: No Way Home (2021), he cleared Peter after Mysterio’s broadcast and caught a brick through a window with his bare hand. “I’m a really good lawyer,” he told the stunned kid. Then Doctor Strange’s spell wiped Peter Parker from the world’s memory, including Murdock’s.

That is the trap the unused draft leaned into. On Script Apart, McKenna said they wrote scenes, or at least detailed an outline, in which Peter still pulled Murdock into the jam. Daredevil would have been counsel on a case about a name he no longer tied to the young man sitting across the desk. The spell that was supposed to give Peter his secret back also erased the one attorney in the Marvel films who had already represented him.

The joke writes itself, which is why it was never going to carry a $225 million summer movie. A cease-and-desist over the Spider-Man brand also sits a little close to the real split in the rights, with Sony making the films and Marvel keeping the character in its wider universe. Fans clocked that overlap as soon as the quotes landed, then jumped straight to a later team-up as the place this idea might still live.

McKenna’s longer breakdown with Sonny Bunch, including the Southeast Asia boat and the fake’s paperwork, is the other conversation:

A Boat in Southeast Asia and a Talking Cat

The courtroom version was only one dead road. Producer Amy Pascal had already said the movie went in a hundred different directions before Cretton focused it. McKenna walked through several of those directions in the same interviews.

THE DRAFTS THAT DID NOT SURVIVE

• The British cover: Peter disguises his voice, pretends he is from Queens doing a British accent, and falls in with a mystery under the name Ben Reilly.
• The boat years: He leaves New York, lives on the water in Southeast Asia, and only comes home when the imposter’s videos start circulating.
• The trademark suit: The fake owns the brand on paper, sends a cease-and-desist, and Peter hires a Matt Murdock who does not remember him.
• The bodega cat: Injured, with nobody to list as an emergency contact, Peter follows a voice around a pharmacy corner and finds a cat that calls him by name, tells him he is not alone, and points him at a Spider Totem.
• MJ solves it: Zendaya’s MJ works out the identity herself and says she told him she would.

The cat speech is the discarded draft that most clearly feeds the finished film. “You are part of a bigger story. You are not alone. I know you feel alone,” McKenna remembered the animal saying. They kept the feeling and cut the talking pet.

The Script Took a Hundred Different Roads

Sony and Marvel wanted Holland’s Peter to be a proper, street-level Spider-Man, on his own after the spell. Story work started in December 2021. McKenna and Sommers, who had written the prior Holland films, were back on the script by February 2023. Cretton took over as director in October 2024. The title, borrowed from a 2008 comic reset, was announced in March 2025. Cameras rolled from August to December 2025, with location work in Glasgow and soundstages at Pinewood.

HOW THE LONELY MOVIE GOT LOCKED

1. December 2021: Work on the fourth Holland film begins after No Way Home, with Holland more involved than on the earlier entries.
2. February 2023: McKenna and Sommers return as the writers.
3. October 2024: Cretton is hired and, with Justin Kuritzkes, pushes the script toward isolation.
4. March 2025: The Brand New Day title is announced.
5. August to December 2025: The film shoots in Glasgow, across England, and at Pinewood.
6. July 27, 2026: It premieres at the Dolby Theatre, then opens in the United States on July 31.

Tom Holland said Cretton arrived when the project needed one idea, and that idea was a young person who is alone. Cretton has said the spell’s fallout was why he signed on. McKenna later called Jean Grey as the missing piece, a young telepath, played by Sadie Sink, whose hunger for connection mirrors Peter’s. They did not land on her until after Cretton joined.

Some pieces survived every version. Sommers said Yelena Belova’s banya sequence with Peter was in from early on, because they liked Holland playing Spider-Man on his heels. Rosario Dawson’s Claire Temple had a scene that did not. The through-line that stayed was the one Sony now sells: fighting crime full-time as Spider-Man in a city that does not remember Peter Parker.

Charlie Cox Spent a Year Shutting It Down

Cox was never in the movie they shot. He spent months saying so, while trailers and a prison-yard glimpse kept the rumor alive. At New York Comic-Con in October 2025 he told interviewer Brandon Davis, “I’m not in Spider-Man,” after noting that people thought his London shoot must be the Holland film. It was not.

He said it again while promoting Daredevil: Born Again. “I’m not in it. Don’t ask. I’m not in it,” Cox said, then added that unless someone dropped him in with computers after the fact, he was not there. He promised. When the interviewer said that broke his heart, Cox answered, “Yeah, mine too.”

On Jimmy Kimmel Live he tried a cleaner line and then undercut it. “No. Now, if I were in the movie, I would also say no, to be clear. But I’m not in the movie.” He has wanted the team-up. The unused draft shows the writers wanted a version of it too, just as a legal farce rather than a rooftop fight.

Born Again’s second season, which ended on May 5, 2026, later put Matt in open court, then in a cell, after he said out loud that he was Daredevil. That finale aired months after Brand New Day wrapped, so it is a poor explanation for why the courtroom draft died. It does make the unused movie even harder to revive. The lawyer Peter would have hired no longer has a secret, or a license, or his freedom.

Loneliness Still Sold $2.46 Billion Tickets

Marvel’s own setup is blunt. In the story, four years have passed since No Way Home, and Peter has stayed gone from MJ and Ned on purpose. He works the city as a celebrated hero nobody can name as Parker. His powers mutate. He builds an inhibitor after talking to Bruce Banner. Sink’s Jean Grey body-hops through New York hunting a sister Damage Control took from her. Jon Bernthal’s Frank Castle is the warning of what a man becomes when he swears off other people.

The released film is 145 minutes, PG-13, and listed at a $225 million budget. Holland, Zendaya, Sink, Jacob Batalon, Bernthal, Florence Pugh, Tramell Tillman, Marisa Tomei, and Mark Ruffalo lead the company. McKenna and Sommers take the main writing credit. Later trailers also name Kuritzkes, the Challengers writer brought in after the original pair moved toward the next Avengers films.

THREE VERSIONS OF THE SAME PROBLEM

Box Office Mojo puts the film at a $360.1 million domestic opening and $2.46 billion worldwide. That is the lonely version, not the one with the talking cat or the cease-and-desist.

THE RELEASED FILM ON PAPER

• Opening: $360.1 million in the United States and Canada, from 4,487 theaters.
• Worldwide: $2.46 billion as counted by Box Office Mojo.
• Runtime: 145 minutes, after a July 27 premiere at the Dolby Theatre.

McKenna called the courtroom draft fun, then called it a different story. The story they shot, with Peter forgotten and a telepath as his mirror, is the one still selling tickets in September.

Frequently Asked Questions

Where Was Spider-Man: Brand New Day Filmed?

Principal photography ran from August to December 2025. The production shot on location in Glasgow and across England, with soundstage work at Pinewood Studios, after Sony and Marvel hired Destin Daniel Cretton in October 2024.

How Long Is Spider-Man: Brand New Day?

The released cut runs 145 minutes, or 2 hours and 25 minutes, and carries a PG-13 rating from the Motion Picture Association for sequences of action and violence and some language.

Who Is Justin Kuritzkes on Brand New Day?

Kuritzkes, the writer of Challengers and Queer, came in for later rewrites after McKenna and Sommers were pulled toward Avengers: Doomsday and Avengers: Secret Wars. Sony’s later trailers credit him alongside the original pair, though the studio’s main film page still lists McKenna and Sommers alone.

What Comic Story Is Brand New Day Named After?

The title comes from Marvel’s 2008 “Brand New Day” comic run, a status-quo reset for Peter Parker. The film uses the name for a different reset: Doctor Strange’s spell, a four-year gap, and a Peter who has to learn how to be a person again, not a full-time mask.