Caffeinated Clint
Thomas Jane tells Sci Fi Wire that he’s skulling a few egg milkshakes and taken out another membership to the gym, in order to rediscover all the muscle he had for last year’s "The Punisher".
Jane’s already started bulking up for the sequel, he tells.
"I’ve been in the gym for seven weeks now," Jane said. "I’ve already put on 12 pounds of muscle. They want to start going before the end of the year. Ideally I’d like to see the film come out in the fall of 2006, but I don’t have any control over that."
Jane said that he was "not at liberty" to say who will be writing and directing the sequel, and he wouldn’t confirm that the storyline would take place in an urban setting, possibly New York. "That is the rumor," he said.
Jane says the franchise has real potential.
"I still believe The Punisher has so much material to be mined," Jane said. "There’s so much new ground to be broken. I would love to see The Punisher go more in the direction of a film like Taxi Driver. I’d like the audience to be able to visit the mind of this guy. The potential for The Punisher—especially when it comes to the real juicy stuff—should go more in the direction of a gritty, urban street drama like Taxi Driver rather than a glossy, fantasy direction like the X-Men [films]."
Meantime, Jane and comic-book writer Steve Niles have announced they’ll be serving up some edgy horror pics in the future.
The abovementioned site says the first offering will be a werewolf pic called "In the Blood", and then, a horror titled "The Dark Country".
"We want to do stuff that is outside the box," Jane said in an interview. "Stuff that is more daring than we’d be able to get away with if we were working for somebody else. The first couple of films that come out of Raw Entertainment are going to be adult-oriented, hard R movies. As it stands now, we’re the boss. If we want something in a film, we won’t have anybody looking over our shoulder saying we can’t do that."
