Here’s 22 Years After Last Movie, Marvel Actor Sparks New Avengers: Secret Wars Rumor (And Fans Aren’t Sold)

If Avengers: Secret Wars holds true to its namesake comic crossover events, we can expect a whole mess of characters from every section of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, and perhaps the Marvel movies that predate it as well. Tobey Maguire’s Spider-Man is one that’s heavily rumored, along with Hugh Jackman as Wolverine. Those two names aren’t the wildest of guesses, since both have shown up in MCU movies subsequent to their prior Marvel movie sagas. We already know from the trailer to Avengers: Doomsday that Channing Tatum is back as Gambit, as are most of the main Fox movie X-Men, even if they most likely are different variants than the ones we saw before.

The real wild cards, however, would be characters like Wesley Snipes’ Blade or Nicolas Cage’s Ghost Rider. That’s because we already know that the Fox-Disney merger allows characters from Fox movies like X-Men, Daredevil, and all three previous Fox Fantastic Four movies. Thanks to Marvel and Sony playing nice over Spider-Man, we can also assume all Spider-characters are in play. Blade, however, was made into a movie by New Line, owned by Warner Bros., and Ghost Rider was Sony but not Spider-related. This is the sort of caveat to apply to the latest actor-starting rumors swirling…none other than Thomas Jane.

Thomas Jane Is Getting in Punisher Shape

Twenty-two years after playing the Punisher in the second of three non-MCU movies, Thomas Jane has been posting images on his socials of himself in the gym, getting back into a bulked-up, superheroic physique. One of the posts includes the quote, “All things are ready, if our mind be so.” The pinned Tweet on his page is of him in Punisher costume. Fans are speculating, as they are wont to do, but how likely is such a return, really?

It’s not impossible, but it comes at a steeper cost. Marvel Studios now has the rights to the Punisher in movies and TV, as evidenced by their recent streaming one-shot and Jon Bernthal’s appearance in Spider-Man: Brand New Day. Yet Jane’s 2004 The Punisher and 2008’s Punisher: War Zone, starring Ray Stevenson, are still Lionsgate IP as individual movies. It’s this rule that forced a costume change for Blade when he appeared in Deadpool & Wolverine — New Line claimed the trench coat costume from their trilogy as their own.

Plus, as Snipes himself said in that movie, “There’s only one Blade.” Sticky Fingaz and Mahershala Ali’s Eternals post-credits voice-over might differ, but it’s undeniable that there are multiple Punishers with their own fan followings. Dolph Lundgren first played Frank Castle in a direct-to-video movie from New World Pictures, followed by Jane and Stevenson at Lionsgate. Stevenson is sadly deceased, but Lundgren’s out there revisiting old roles in cameos.

What’s much more likely here is that Jane is trying to get Marvel’s attention again. It wouldn’t be the first time, as he previously pushed to be the Punisher again with an appearance as the character (albeit unnamed on camera) in Adi Shankar’s bootleg short “Dirty Laundry.” Instead of getting the part back for himself, he wound up inspiring his own successor in Bernthal.

Marvel Studios does pay attention to the fans, however, and maybe if there’s enough of a groundswell, they’ll find room to cram him in there somewhere. Plus they did spring for The Russian, a villain from the 2004 Punisher, to appear in Deadpool & Wolverine, though he wasn’t played by original actor Kevin Nash, and technically a striped shirt and blue jeans may not exactly count as a copyrightable costume.