Well, it certainly doesn't seem like that's the case. New director, new vision, recasted lead, no correlation between this film and the last -- it's got reboot written all over it.
I'm not pretending this is a direct sequel. It's a vague reboot. But they clearly haven't decided to go back and do the origin or anything like that. It doesn't expressly get rid of anything about the previous franchise. It just doesn't mention most elements. If you want to call that a reboot, fine, it's a reboot, but it feels more like a continuation of The Punisher's story than anything else.
There wasn't a lot of buzz for 2004's Punisher movie because it was a bad movie and a modest success. Had it turned out to be a critical/financial success, I'm sure there would have been more anticipation for a sequel.
There wasn't a lot of buzz because it wasn't a big movie, and the character, while known, isn't a wildly popular one. It was a niche movie. There was never going to be a lot of buzz for THE PUNISHER.
And yes, The Punisher is no Batman or Spider-man, but he has a chance to be more successful than he has been on film.
I'm not even sure what that means.
Look at all of the dark, shoot 'em up action films that have been successful over the years. It's a lucrative genre, but the Punisher has hard a hard time fitting in.
I'm not sure what genre you're referring to, but these are the movies I remember:
Shoot Em Up made $25,687,416 worldwide.
Smokin Aces made $57 million
THE TRANSPORTER made $44 million
THE TRANSPORTER 2 made $85 million
HITMAN made $100 million, largely due to it's overseas performance.
MAN ON FIRE made $118 million. It also featured one of the world's most marketable movie stars and featured a production budget twice the size of THE PUNISHER's.
By comparison, THE PUNISHER made $54 million with an unknown in the lead role. So in terms of success, it's right in there, given it's budget. And it cleaned up on DVD. Action movies, darker shoot em ups, they seem to be an uneven genre. THE PUNISHER is an action/thriller, but not generally a HUGE action concept.
1. Lack of buzz/word of any kind.
To a point. Compared to a larger project, obviously fairly little "buzz", but there's been word. Just because they're not marketing the hell out of this thing seven months before it's release doesn't mean they won't market it at all.
I'm curious. Why would you expect there to be much buzz anyway?
2. Thomas Jane pulling out of the project.
I'm still not sure what that was about. I'm starting to think he was just a bit temperamental about the whole thing. They even offered to let him write some of the thing, as I recall.
3. Kurt Sutter severing any connection he had with writing the film.
Don't know what to say on that. He seems to have indicated not that the final product is really bad, but that it was not quite as realistic as he wanted it to be. And his "vision" seems to be very similar to Lexi Alexander's.
4. The film was pushed back from a September 12th release date to December 5th -- where films like this go to have a quiet death. (This is the big one)
Personally I'd see this as a good sign. The Holiday Season is a time for good movies. September, not so much. You say "films like this", as if you've seen it. As if you have any idea what it's going to be like. Even if you'd read the script, you couldn't make that call at this point.
