As has long been rumored, Jon Bernthal will reprise his role as The Punisher in the upcoming Marvel series Daredevil: Born Again.
Charlie Cox is returning as the title character, a blind attorney by the name of Matt Murdock, while Vincent D’Onofrio will be back as Wilson Fisk, aka Kingpin. However, the series won’t be quite as dark as before given that it’ll be streaming on Disney+ next spring instead of Netflix.
Born Again hails from writers and executive producers Matt Corman and Chris Ord, and while the show takes its title from Frank Miller‘s famed Daredevil storyline of 1986, it’s expected to deviate somewhat — for example, The Punisher isn’t in Miller’s comic — which is certainly understandable given the nature of television.
However, unlike the nature of television of late, Born Again is planned as an 18-episode story that will be presented all at once, as opposed to other Marvel series, which are rarely more than 10 episodes, and usually just six. That makes it a bit more narratively ambitious than most.
Daredevil ran for three seasons between 2013 and 2018, and Season 2 introduced Bernthal’s anti-hero Frank Castle, a grieving father who becomes a crime-fighting vigilante known as The Punisher. The character received his own Netflix spinoff series, which ran for two seasons from 2017 to 2019.
Though all of Marvel’s Netflix series were canceled when Disney announced its own streaming service, Marvel boss Kevin Feige still considered the characters to be in play. Cox returned in Spider-Man: No Way Home and She-Hulk, while D’Onofrio appeared in Hawkeye, and both are expected to play key roles in Echo, which will set the stage for Born Again.
Two actors who reportedly won’t be back for the new Daredevil series are Deborah Ann Woll and Elden Henson, who played supporting characters Karen Page and Foggy Nelson, respectively, though it’s unclear whether those roles will be recast or if the characters simply don’t appear in Born Again.
Bernthal is coming off the Showtime series American Gigolo and the HBO limited series We Own This City, for which he absolutely deserved an Emmy, as he was absolutely electric. He’s represented by CAA and Cognition, and the Hollywood Reporter confirmed his casting in Daredevil: Born Again.
