If you’ve been spending the past year of your dedicated to writing playful 80s family sitcom music to pair with Netflix’s new Punisher offering, Jon Bernthal has some terrible news for you. The upcoming streaming take on Frank Castle will be (GASP!) a bit on the dark side. Or a lot on the dark side from the sounds of things.
As the megaviolent footage from Comic-Con hinted at, Marvel’s tee-friendly vigilante is going to some grisly places in the action-stuffed showcase. In an interview with Entertainment Weekly, Bernthal explained that The Punisher will reach levels of darkness pushing the limits for the Marvel banner.
“During this show, nobody is who they appear to be,” the actor told EW. “This season is much darker as it goes, it gets darker and darker and more visceral. The show takes you on this journey of Frank becoming more and more human again and then shutting off and shutting off and going back to what works for him, and the place where he kind of belongs, and I think that’s a place of solitude and of darkness and destruction. It’s going to get into as dark and as brutal a place as you’ve ever seen in the Marvel world, I can promise you that.”
It’s not like his Netflix Marvel peers have been G-rated, cheery and hanging out under rainbows and gumdrops during their output, so this is a worthwhile boast. Or is that a warning? I guess it depends on what you want in your Punisher and we haven’t been lacking in ones to choose from. When asked what makes this gun-toting death dealer so appealing to comic fans, Bernthal shared his theory.
“I think there’s a bit of Frank in all of us. We all go through bouts of darkness and regret and shame, and we mess up and we make mistakes, so I think to really zero in on that and to dig into that wound is what makes him interesting,” said Bernthal. “But if there’s one thing I want to get right for this show, it’s that I want to be completely respectful of the military community and the people that this character means so much to. I just really want to get that right. More than anything, Frank is a soldier.”
The Punisher is expected to arrive on Netflix in solo series form sometime before 2017 is through.
(Via Entertainment Weekly)