Punisher War Zone (2008)

 

A film - self aware that it is a comic book with larger than life personalities, and action set pieces  that could only be derived from a comic book panel. 

War Zone is a product of the Joe Quesada Marvel Knights comic book line. A comic book run that in the 1990's had a very strong run in its infancy, but fizzled out either by an over saturation of content with 2 other Punisher titles being released monthly, or by the sudden decline in overall comic book sales. These poor sales declared Marvel to file for bankruptcy and sell off its movie rights to film distributors like Sony to make the company solvent again.    This put the future in the hands of  Marvel's movie producer Avi Arad ; Arad wanted a Marvel movie to really incorporate the history of its characters and tell a story faithful to its comic book adaption;  usually at a cost within a tightly budgeted restraint, which was the case in the Thomas Jane Punisher movie,  the Ben Affleck's Dare-Devil movie, and Jennifer Garner's Elektra Movie; all directors' commentary eluded to strong budgetary constraints placed on them. Lexi Alexander, who had constrictions, but came from a low budgeted Screen Gem  of Green Street Hooligans, took on the job in the hopes to lead to bigger budget projects down the road.

This movie to date is the third and final motion picture adaptation of a live action Punisher film to be released theatrically. Featuring Ray Stevenson in the starring role. This film shared an over the top punch that shattered a man's face into their brains, a heat seeking rocket launcher taking out a parkour villain in mid jump,  a mob boss so obsessed with his looks to only become a facially destroyed main antagonist, and a mentally unbalanced brother who calmly embraces his Hannible Lector side from time to time.  The action set pieces are all taken directly from the various panels from the wealth of Punisher comic pages. And endorsed whole heartedly by the production company of Lionsgate who was supportive of a R rated hero film; As marketing pushed the film  to a Christmas release without cutting the trailer in a way to show how much of a hard R rating this film was.  The result - it opened on December 5th 2008, in 6th place and was pulled from theatres on December 24th in 25th place, making only $1.6 Million opening day weekend and tabulating just over $10.1 Million world wide theatrically.  It was a commercial disaster with a budget of $35 Million and nearly half of that 10.1 million was to return payment for the marketing and its film exhibitors which is automatic off the top, not to mention payment for the interest in loans to the bank for financing the film. In the end the hope for DVD/Blue Ray sales  to help clear the books was expected. That in the end was $14 million dollars, putting the movie at deficit of a near 1 million dollars that it never was able to clear.  The result was Director Lexi Alexander filmography never bouncing back after the release of Punisher War Zone and some executives  not keeping their day jobs after the Christmas of 2008.