Punisher is coming home. More like he couldn’t pay his rent so he is coming to crash on dad’s couch so he can get himself sorted out.
slipped into the Marvel Entertainment panel Saturday night in Hall H: Marvel has regained the film rights for the Punisher from Lionsgate. Kevin Feige, the president of production for Marvel Entertainment, had this to say: “Frank Castle is under the roof of Marvel Studios… and we hope to bring him into the fray shortly.”
It is good news that Marvel has acquired the rights to one of its properties again. I was kind of hoping we would hear about some massive deal where Marvel recinds all its outsourced material to bring it back to the studio where they belong.
But regaining Punisher is hardly a “win”
After three stellar attempts to depict the character on screen (Dolph Lungren,1989 – Thomas Jane,2004 – Ray Stevenson,2008) none of them managed to put the character in the spotlight. No one cared.
Punisher is no better than the criminals he kills. He takes his own narrow view of “justice” and deals it out like a true villain. Good for you criminal… you showed those badguys how bad people do things.
While some characters can gain empathy in a situation like this, I just never felt that the Punisher was “right”, just crazy and had seemingly unlimited access to firearms. And yeah, we know that vigilantee type heroes are all breaking the law to some degree, but Punisher embraces being wrong in order to deliver “right”
So while they make it sound like they are happy to have Punisher back, you know if there was any hope that Punisher was going to be a megahit, the studio who had him wouldn’t have let him go.
Kind of like how Fox wont abandon X-Men, or Sony wont let go of Spider-Man.
Will a Marvel run Punisher be any different than the last 3 tries?
