Patton Oswalt joined director Lexi Alexander on an episode of the film podcast “How Did This Get Made?” to discuss Punisher War Zone.

How Did This Get Made? Punisher War Zone

Here are my notes from the interview:

-Lexi Alexander didn’t really want to do a Punisher sequel, but there was a sense that doing a big Hollywood movie was something she needed to do.
-The first meeting was right after the Virginia Tech shooting, and the news showed a clip of the shooter’s bed room and he had a Punisher poster.
-Alexander put the meeting off until later, and the studio ended up picking Rounders director John Dahl.
-But Alexander ended up being tapped for the film again when Dahl asked for too much money.
-The way the studio actually talked her into doing the movie was by telling her that she would be the first woman to direct a major super hero adaptation and that she could serve as a role model for girls who want to direct action films.
-Alexander says she really does hope she can serve as a role model to show girls that they can grow up to direct films other than Lifetime movies.
-Alexander started by doing focus groups of Punisher comic fans and asked them what they disliked about the first two Punisher movies.
-Alexander says all the ways that Frank Castle ends up killing people come from the comics, except the bit where he blows up the parkour guys with a rocket launcher.
-She said she included that bit because people kept telling her not to include any parkour guys because parkour was being over done. She decided instead to include them, but have them get blown up.

And here’s a clip of the Punisher from Super Hero Squad on Cartoon Network, which was played in the podcast:

See also: Oswalt’s review of Punisher War Zone