The Punisher was almost a network TV police procedural in 2011 - here's what happened

Before Jon Bernthal, there was almost a Detective Frank Castle on Fox.

Before Marvel moved to unify all its TV and movie projects under one creative banner via Disney+ a few years ago, the early-to-mid 2000s of Marvel’s TV was the Wild West when it came to rights and adaptations.

You had character rights all mixed up among different studios and networks with different approaches. There were shows like Blade on Spike TV (remember that one?), Legion on FX, MCU-adjacent shows like Agent Carter and Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. on ABC, The Gifted on Fox, Runaways on Hulu, and a whole lot more.

One project in the mix during that era, around 2011 and 2012? A Punisher television pilot from ABC Studios that was in development to air on Fox. The pitch was basically an hour-long procedural built around NYPD detective Frank Castle. The show would’ve followed Frank as both a detective by day, and his alter ego as the Punisher by night. Had it moved forward, the series would’ve found Castle taking on cases as a “vigilante seeking justice for those failed by the court system.”

The show received a put pilot commitment at Fox, but failed to make the network’s schedule for the 2011 or 2012 seasons. It would eventually die on the vine in development purgatory. The project was being developed by producer Ed Bernero (Third Watch, Criminal Minds), so he certainly had the skill set to pull off something with this approach.

The concept was loosely compared to a Dexter-esque vibe at the time, with Frank going off-book to punish criminals, just with stories told within the realm of network TV broadcast standards. Though we don’t know the reasoning for why Fox ultimately passed on the pilot, in hindsight, it makes sense. There are just some characters better suited for a bloody, R-rated adaptation. And the Punisher is tops on that list. Trying to sanitize this character enough to fit into a network TV show would’ve been a hard needle to thread.

The Fox show’s cancellation led to Punisher’s Netflix revival

With the Fox pilot kaput, the character’s rights eventually reverted back to Marvel — and that’s the domino that set up the casting of Jon Bernthal and his now decade-long run as Frank Castle in the MCU. Bernthal’s version of Castle would first show up in Netflix’s Daredevil series, which then led to his own spinoff solo Punisher series.

Of course, Bernthal’s Punisher is still kicking around on Daredevil: Born Again, and has his own special presentation on Disney+ that dropped last week with Punisher: One Last Kill. Then looking past that, Bernthal’s Punisher will make the leap to the big screen on Spider-Man: Brand New Day this summer.

Looking back, it’s certainly for the best that Fox’s series was axed during development and never made it past the pilot stage 15 years ago. Because had that series made it to air and stuck around, it would’ve made things far more complicated to use the character in the Defenders run of shows (and eventual solo series).

After a lengthy run of films on the big screen, starting with the 1989 Punisher starring Dolph Lundgren, through Thomas Jane’s 2004 take on The Punisher and Ray Stevenson’s 2008 Punisher: War Zone, the character had been established as a hard-R figure in a hard-R kind of world. The Netflix shows were able to respect that aesthetic in a way it’s hard to imagine Fox could’ve done in a network police procedural.