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When Jon Bernthal was first approached for Marvel Studios' revival of Netflix's hit Daredevil series as Disney+'s Daredevil: Born Again, he turned them down. It's not that he didn't want to be the Punisher again - it's that, as he puts it now, he didn't agree with the version of the Punisher they had planned. Now three years later, he's back in the the series and starring in a spinoff. But it took a lot to get back to this point, beginning with saying 'no' to Daredevil: Born Again in 2022.

"Ultimately, I didn't see it. I didn't see the version of Frank, and what they wanted from Frank [didn't] really make sense to me and I thought would not appeal to the fans and wouldn't be congruent," Bernthal told Entertainment Weekly's Nick Romano. "It was not something I was really interested in doing. So we had to walk away."

This was the original version of Daredevil: Born Again as conceived in 2022 by Matt Corman and Chris Ord, which EW described as "more like a procedural and less connected to the mythology of the original Daredevil series on Netflix." As it turns out, Bernthal wasn't the only one who had issues with the those writers and Marvel Studios initially conceived, and midway through filming Marvel paused production, released the original writers and directors, and brought in a new team lead by Netflix's Punisher writer/producer Dario Scardapane and Netflix's Daredevil second unit director Phil Silvera to do an overhaul. 

"Sometimes you have to be very, very clear with your intentions in this business," Bernthal said of his on-again, off-again relationship with Marvel Studios and the Punisher role. "You can't get confused with how much you love something, how much you love playing something, how much you want to do something. You got to make sure you're serving it. You got to make sure you're doing justice to the people that believe in it and doing justice to the iterations that have come before you."

In early 2024, Marvel Studios re-approached Bernthal and after some coaxing - and agreeing to let him make some alternations to his character - he signed on, and debuted in this week's episode 4.

"They really brought me into the conversation," he said. "We really got specific about where Frank is psychologically, where Frank's at physically."

During filming of Daredevil: Born Again with Bernthal back as the Punisher, he ended up pitching his own spin-off which actually got greenlit as 2026's The Punisher special. He isn't just the star of the one-off episode - he pitched it, and wrote it.

"I went through the process. I went in, I pitched, I gave an outline before I even put pen to page, and I felt like I did not want them to just hand it to me," Bernthal explained. "They had read some of my writing, asked to come and do a pitch, so I did. And they've held me accountable to every step along the way."

This isn't the first time a Marvel star wrote their own project - Edward Norton was hired as both the star and a writer of 2007's The Incredible Hulk reboot. 

"I really want to earn this and I really want this to be good. The story that we've laid out is, I think, really special," said Bernthal. "It's the visceral, psychologically complex, unforgiving, no-holds-barred version of Frank where he's going to turn his back to the audience. And nothing is easy and all violence has a cost, and we're going to see that cost. I'm grateful that they're letting me go to the places that I really want to go."

For Disney+'s Punisher special, Bernthal recruited his previous collaborator Reinaldo Marcus Green (King Richard, We Own This City) as director, and his trainer Nick Koumalatos, a Marin Raider, who the actor said has been "instrumental" in re-assuming the role of the Punisher both "training-wise and psychologically."

As Bernthal's Frank Castle has said on screen, the actor got Marvel Studios to say his name: not the Punisher, but Jon Bernthal.

Keep up to date on Popverse's Marvel coverage, with these highlights:

• The MCU needs Anya Taylor-Joy's Magik in it (and not just for the X-Men connection)
• How Disney+'s What If...? is the moonshot for the next 50 years of Marvel Studios & the MCU
• Marvel Studios has accidentally created a new Phase that predates Phases 1 - 6: the MCU Phase Zero
• Overgrown children of the atom: Marvel's X-Men can't evolve past their '90s commercial peak
• The biggest outstanding questions of the Marvel Studios' movies & TV shows
• Donald Trump is the landlord for Marvel's House of Ideas
• Marvel Studios swapping out Doctor Doom for Kang offers the chance to jettison the Multiverse Saga
• What Marvel Studios boss Kevin Feige is saying (and not saying) about the MCU X-Men franchise says a lot about the future of the Mutant Saga
• If Marvel is going to bring Loki back for Secret Wars, it's time to give him an upgrade
• In 2021, Sony's boss said people won't miss Spider-Man in its Spider-adjacent movie. Turns out, they do.