Netflix, Marvel Invade New York City To Shoot Five Superhero Series

New York City is about to be invaded by Marvel superheroes, and you’ll see the results streaming on Netflix starting next year, when Marvel Comics fans get hit by a bonanza of comic book action via the booming online service.

The package of four, full series of 13 one-hour episodes plus a concluding mini-series, bringing the total to 60 hours of Marvel Comics programming, came to New York thanks largely to a package of filming incentives reportedly valued at around $4 million, and the agreement is the largest film or TV production deal ever struck with New York state.

New York Governor Andrew Cuomo has made drawing Hollywood to New York City, and other areas in the state, a priority. With the lavish tax credits offered by New York, the state fielded 124 film production application, 33 TV shows and 26 pilot applications last year alone.

Marvel’s parent company, Disney, put the rights out to bid for the package which Marvel calls, “Flawed Heroes Of Hell’s Kitchen.” The four series will center on the characters Daredevil, Marvel’s answer to Batman, followed by three lesser-known characters: the martial arts hero Iron Fist, Jessica Jones, a female private eye, and Luke Cage, one of comics’ few long-standing African-American superheroes.

The four series lead into the miniseries, The Defenders, in which the “Hell’s Kitchen” characters form a superhero team, kind of a low-rent version of Marvel’s The Avengers.

Netflix won the bidding war, beating out cable networks and other online subscription services, for the elaborate New York City project which takes “Netflix members deep into the gritty world of heroes and villains of Hell’s Kitchen, New York,” the company said.

In real life, while once plagued by organized crime and street violence, the west side neighborhood once called Hell’s Kitchen, is no longer especially “gritty.” In fact, now officially renamed “Clinton,” the neighborhood is the gentrified home to numerous upscale restaurants and expensive condominiums.

But the “Yuppie, Foodie Heroes Of Clinton” just wouldn’t have the same appeal to comic book fans.

Though set in New York City, Disney and Marvel looked at other locations to film the Netflix superhero shows. Reportedly, New York just beat out Toronto as the new fictional home to the “Flawed Heroes of Hell’s Kitchen.”