The news broke this morning. Deadline's David Lieberman and Nellie Andreeva explain it this way:

Disney will provide Netflix with live action series and a miniseries featuring Marvel characters Daredevil, Jessica Jones, Iron Fist, and Luke Cage set in the gritty world of heroes and villains of Hell’s Kitchen, New York. Netflix has committed to at least four, 13-episode series over “multiple years,” beginning in 2015, culminating with a miniseries, The Defenders, that “reimagines a dream team of self-sacrificing, heroic characters.”

On the whole, I'm pretty excited for this. I always figured Daredevil was a character better-suited for a TV series than a movie—he's a character who does best when he's suffering slow punishment, and you just can't get that kind of stretched out agony right in a movie—and the Jessica Jones character is from Brian Michael Bendis's Alias, which is some of his best work for Marvel. Beyond that, I've always thought Luke Cage and Iron Fist were two of Marvel's best characters. I hope that if this works out, after The Defenders, they'll do a series of just Cage and Iron Fist. And purists might complain about the Defenders name being used for these characters, but let's face it: As much as I'd love to see a faithful TV adaptation of Steve Gerber's run on the title, there's no way the comic book version of The Defenders would work on-screen.

Which is not to say that this news doesn't give me a little pause. I like that Marvel is finally adapting properties with a black headlining character and a female headlining character, but it'd be a shame if these characters became the sole examples that Marvel could point to when they were asked about their diversity. The movies are obviously the highest-profile product that Marvel does, and more diversity on movie screens should remain an important goal. Also, I hope these series aren't as cheesy and poorly written as Marvel's disappointing Agents of SHIELD series, which continues to be a total piece of shit TV show. If they manage to retain the spirit and the adventure of the movie adaptations on Netflix, these shows will be huge hits.