The Punisher - Director Interview

JONATHAN HENSLEIGH: LOOKING BACK ON THE PUNISHER - NEWSARAMA Excellent interview here with the writer/director of the movie The Punisher (the good one with Thomas Jane, not the one with Dolph :) Note, there are some spoilers about the included storyline on the Extended Cut DVD, but there's some really interesting behind the scenes info here on how they made the movie. For an action film, it was a shoe string budget. I thought it turned out well, and the lack of budget probably explains the old school stuntwork instead of heavy CGI. I really liked The Punisher movie, and am anxiously awaiting the Extended Cut that's coming in my next goodie box from Amazon... Reading the article, it's clear just how hard it is to get a movie from concept to completion. I'd imagine it's even more so with a first time director, not to mention the meddling from the studio execs and the marketing guys. He states in the article that the decision to open the film opposite Kill Bill 2 was made by the marketing guys at Lionsgate. Why that boneheaded move was done will go unanswered for now though, as JH doesn't go into it. The good news is that he and Thomas Jane are at work on a sequel, that should eventually get made. They're still dealing with script issues - as in how to do urban action sequences on another shoe string budget. I hope a sequel gets made, as I'm a fan of The Punisher character and comics. The Punisher grahic novel Born, and the comic The Tyger, are two fantastic character stories by Garth Ennis that really show how Frank Castle became The Punisher and why. And, on just a plain storytelling level, they were stories that had me do a 'woah' at the end :)