The Punisher is coming back sooner than expected. After news of a Special Presentation in the works featuring Jon Bernthal’s Frank Castle at Disney+, The Punisher is now set to appear in Destin Daniel Cretton’s “Spider-Man: Brand New Day.”
Multiple outlets, such as The Hollywood Reporter, reveal that Bernthal is showing up in the fourth installment of the MCU iteration of the live-action “Spider-Man” films starring Tom Holland as Peter Parker. A co-production between Sony Pictures and Marvel Studios, the next superhero adventure, prepping for a shoot in the United Kingdom this summer, will swing into theaters on July 31, 2026.
READ MORE: Summer 2025 Movie Preview: 50 Films To Watch
Other new additions to the cast of “Spider-Man: Brand New Day” include Sadie Sink (“Stranger Things,” “The Whale”) and Liza Colón-Zayas (“The Bear”) in mystery roles.
How exactly will Marvel include an R-rated killing machine like Castle in a PG-13 movie? It will be an exercise in restraint; however, the two New York City-based characters often cross paths in cartoons and comics. Audiences haven’t seen The Punisher on the big screen since the late Ray Stevenson played the ruthless antihero in Lexi Alexander’s bonkers “Punisher: War Zone.”
This would be the second major character from the “Daredevil: Born Again” series showing up in the “Spider-Man” franchise after Charlie Cox had a minor cameo in “Spider-Man: No Way Home” as Parker’s lawyer Matt Murdock. We’ll keep our fingers crossed that Marvel can add Daredevil properly and Vincent D’Onofrio’s Kingpin (a long-standing Spidey villain) to the film, too.
Could Marvel be ditching the increasingly tiresome Multiverse gimmick this time for a street-level story? Perhaps, since that is how Kevin Feige has previously described Spidey, a street-level superhero, in recent years. But we’ll have to wait for further information, including the official identity of the main villain, to be entirely sure of the tone of “Spider-Man: Brand New Day.”
Holland and Bernthal have worked together outside of the MCU before on the 2017 film “Pilgrimage,” and most recently took roles in Christopher Nolan’s upcoming Greek epic “The Odyssey.”
- Christopher Marc
- Christopher Marc
- Christopher Marc
- Christopher Marc
- Christopher Marc
- Christopher Marc
