‘Sons of Anarchy’ Creator Kurt Sutter Almost Made a Marvel Movie, Here’s What Went Wrong

Sons of Anarchy meets Marvel Comics? They might not be the most obvious combination, but Anarchy showrunner Kurt Sutter almost had a shot at directing a Marvel film. Sutter was in the running to direct Punisher: War Zone in 2008, and while it isn’t a part of the now-ubiquitous Marvel Cinematic Universe, it is one of the major portrayals of Frank Castle, a.k.a. The Punisher.

In a new interview with ComingSoon, Sutter explained that he wasn’t picked for the gig — Lexi Alexander ended up directing the film — because he took “too many liberties” with the established canon and Marvel didn’t like the direction that he took the storyline. However, Sutter is still proud of whatever influence he had on the film, especially its “grounded” feel and the villain Jigsaw’s gruesome origin story.

“It was a really interesting process and I had never worked with Marvel before,” Sutter explained. “And you know, I think in my draft of the movie, I ultimately took too many liberties in f—ing with the IP — and it was a rewrite. I was not asked to do all that much. I just saw the story in a different way. So ultimately, I wrote the script and they were like, we didn’t want this.”

“But, one of the things I felt I got to do was bring a level of reality to it,” Sutter continued. “I felt like I was able to sort of ground Frank [Castle] a little bit more in the world as I knew it. And the result of that was the recycling plant. And so, yeah, I think that and like, maybe a couple of pieces of dialogue and one other story turn were the remnants of my draft.”

Sutter opened up (somewhat bitterly) about what went wrong with his involvement with Punisher: War Zone to ScreenRant five years ago, explaining that while he was a Marvel fan, he “was not a comic book kid” and became a fan of the medium as an adult. “I didn’t realize that you can’t take liberties with some of the characters and some of the traits, because they are what they are,” Sutter said. “They’re very derivative, they’re stereotyped, but this is the guy that does this, and this is the guy who does this… So they’re two-dimensional for a reason: that’s the purpose they serve. So I was trying to expand the Marvel Universe in a direction it should not have been expanded in.”