Jon Bernthal to Return as The Punisher in Disney+’s Daredevil: Born Again: Report

Jon Bernthal returns as The Punisher in Daredevil: Born Again. According to The Hollywood Reporter, The Walking Dead actor is set to reprise his role as anti-hero Frank Castle in the upcoming Disney+ series – for the first time since Netflix’s Punisher ended in 2019. The Last Time that we heard about Bernthal dressing as The Punisher was in August 2022 when actress Rosario Dawson – whose character was featured in Netflix daredevil – let this information escape, to retract it later. Daredevil: Born Again is part of Phase Five of the Marvel Cinematic Universe and is slated for release in early 2024.

The report notes that Bernthal will reunite with actors Charlie Cox and Vincent D’Onofrio on the show, having previously collaborated with them on Netflix’s interconnected Marvel series. Filming begins in New York later this month, with the series set to be a longer epic than other Marvel Studios productions such as She-Hulk: Attorney at Law (9 episodes) and Moon Knight (6 episodes). Daredevil: Born Again is slated as an 18-episode affair, co-written and produced by Matt Corman and Chris Ord. The series itself is a soft reboot, of sorts, based on the eponymous 1986 comic – written by Frank Miller – which details the masked vigilante’s descent into madness at the hands of the Kingpin, as he struggles to build a new life.

The Disney+ series, however, is set to deviate from this plotline to an indefinite degree. The Punisher, for example, never appeared in this story, while Matt Murdock/Daredevil continued his paranoid fight against the Kingpin. Bernthal’s The Punisher first appeared in Season 2 of Netflix’s Daredevil, where he waged a war on crime, eventually crossing paths with Cox’s Daredevil and tying him down to prove that lethal forces are the most effective method. viable to eradicate crime. His arc eventually branched into a standalone The Punisher series, which ran for two seasons, before Netflix canceled the show in 2019. Netflix quickly lost its license to Marvel content in 2022, leading to shows such as daredevil, Jessica Jones, Luke Cageand the above The Punishermoving to Disney+ Hotstar.

That said, other supporting characters from the Netflix-Marvel series such as Deborah Ann Woll’s Karen Page and Elden Hensen’s Foggy Nelson apparently won’t be part of the Daredevil: Born Again cast. Cox was brought back into Kevin Feige’s MCU in 2021, making a cameo appearance in Spider-Man: No Way Home, after which he made a brief appearance in the final two episodes of She-Hulk: Attorney at Law. In the latter, he was seen sporting a yellow and red costume, inspired by classic Marvel comics.

In 2021, Bernthal said in an interview that he hoped all other iterations of the Punisher character should be cast into obscurity. “There must be a level of darkness. I think if there’s any slacking off on this character, you’re doing the character a disservice, every iteration of the character, every comic that’s come before it, and all the amazing fans of the character. This character means so much to the military,” he said. “So like I said before, it’s not about whether you do the character; it’s about whether you can do it right, and I’m only interested in doing it right.

Daredevil: Born Again is slated for release in early 2024, on Disney+ and Disney+ Hotstar.