The Punisher: One Last Kill has arrived on Disney+ to positive reviews (it has 85% on Rotten Tomatoes), and many fans are already hoping that filmmaker Reinaldo Marcus Green (King Richard) returns to tell another Frank Castle story.
However, he currently has his sights set on a different character. "The long play is to get back into Marvel," Green told The Playlist of his aspirations beyond this Special Presentation. "Obviously, if Spider-Man, Spider-Verse live-action Miles Morales comes along, I know of a half Black, half Puerto Rican Mets fan from New York that would be right for that. So we’ll see."
The director was raised in the Bronx and is a fitting choice to do right by the young web-slinger. While casual fans frequently suggest Black actors in their 20s or 30s should play Miles (Stranger Things alum Caleb McLaughlin, for example), the comic book Miles is a Brooklyn-born Afro-Latino teenager.
Green is busy, having just wrapped shooting a Southern Bastards pilot for Hulu. He's also working on a Tiger Woods biopic, but reiterated that he's eager to return to Marvel. "I just want to work on fun characters, meaningful work with great people," he told the site.
Given the insane action sequences in The Punisher: One Last Kill, one can only imagine what Green would do with a character like Spidey.
When Sony Pictures and Marvel Studios parted ways after Spider-Man: Far From Home, Sony executives immediately made plans to continue the franchise without Kevin Feige's input.
We'll likely never know what that would have entailed. However, once both sides managed to get back on good terms, the wall-crawler found himself caught up in the Multiverse with 2021's Spider-Man: No Way Home. That led to the return of Tobey Maguire and Andrew Garfield as their respective Peter Parker Variants, not to mention some familiar villains.
Sony tried to get in on the Multiversal action with Morbius. However, after cutting several confusing nods to Sam Raimi's Spider-Man franchise, the studio settled for one of the worst post-credits scenes ever, featuring the Living Vampire's first meeting with a reality-displaced Vulture.
The idea of Venom fighting Spider-Man was later teased but never followed up on, and Sony has now given up on its slate of Marvel spin-offs. Instead, the studio has focused on Spider-Man: Brand New Day, a Marvel Studios co-production that brings Peter Parker back to his street-level roots.
In the past, Tom Holland has expressed his hope to bring Miles into the MCU before his time as Spider-Man is up. "If I would be lucky enough to somehow bring Miles Morales into my Spider-Man Universe and into the MCU," the actor said, "I’d love to do for a young kid what [Robert] Downey [Jr.] did for me."
For now, it's thought that Miles is off-limits to Marvel Studios. The expectation is that things will change when the animated Spider-Verse trilogy wraps up with next year's Spider-Man: Beyond the Spider-Verse.
Stay tuned for updates as we have them.