Thomas Jane Wants To Direct a PUNISHER Project Starring Jon Bernthal
Thomas Jane brought Marvel’s Frank Castle to life in the 2004 film adaptation of The Punisher. There are a lot of fans of that film and Jane was awesome in the lead role. Years later the character was played by Jon Bernthal in Netflix’s The Punisher series, which Marvel fans seemed to love. That series ended up being canceled like all the other Marvel shows at Netflix.
Well, Jane would love to get back involved with The Punisher franchise and says that he'd actually like to direct Bernthal as Frank Castle in a Punisher film.
"That would be a fan thing. If the fans really wanted me back, and we could find a script. See, I think the Punisher, and the reason why I did the short, was that it hasn't fully been cracked in a way that fully honors the character, Frank Castle, in a film. And I love what Bernthal did on Netflix. I think he's such a great Punisher. In fact, I would love to direct a Punisher starring Bernthal, because he's such a great actor.
He went on to say:
"Now, if the fans wanted me to come back and play Frank, and the script was something, and when we found a director and a script where we really felt that we could put a stamp on this character, there is so much to that Frank Castle and the Punisher, and his world. We couldn't make a dark film when we did Punisher in 2004. We couldn't go as dark because people just hadn't trusted, on the production side, that fans would be into that. But, now we've got shows like The Boys and, of course, The Dark Knight came out after The Punisher, where I think that producers and studios are now aware that there's a real audience for the darkness, the Taxi Driver-esque quality that you could pull out of a Frank Castle, and that hasn't been done. And I would love to do that. But again, we have to take it to a place where, frankly, The Punisher has always wanted to go."
I’d love to see Jane and Benthal work on a Punisher project together. I don’t know if it will ever happen, but if it did, I’m sure the fans would flip over it.