Artisan's sales agent Summit Entertainment handled international sales, with Columbia TriStar Film Distributors International acquiring the rights in all non-North American territories except for eight Southeast Asian and Middle East territories as well as India and China.

[4] Screenwriter Jonathan Hensleigh agreed to helm the film during its development stage despite a dispute with Marvel Studios, marking his directorial debut.

However, Krieg's death was faked and is later revealed to be undercover FBI agent Frank Castle, who is on his final mission before retirement.

The tenants treat Castle's wounds and hide him in his hidden elevator as Saint's men arrive for him.

Castle ties Saint to a car and sends it into the club's parking lot, which is rigged with explosives.

Castle returns home and prepares to kill himself with his mission fulfilled, but decides to continue to fight crime after seeing a vision of his wife.

Castle leaves some of Saint's money as a farewell gift to the tenants for protecting him and is then seen standing alone on the Sunshine Skyway Bridge at sunset.

In a voice-over, Castle assumes the new identity of Punisher and vows to kill anyone who harms innocent people in any way.

[5] Jane said, when asked the second time to play the Punisher, that he became interested when Arad sent Tim Bradstreet's artwork of the character.

Jane trained for six to seven months with the United States Navy SEALs and gained more than twenty pounds of muscle for the part.

[10] In 2000, Marvel made a long-term agreement with Artisan Entertainment to turn 15 of their characters into films and TV shows, among them The Punisher with Gale Anne Hurd to produce.

[11] The Punisher marked Marvel's first major independent release as an equity owner, whereby it contributes characters and creative support to lower-budget pics in exchange for a financial stake in the negative cost.

[17] For inspiration, Hensleigh and cinematographer Conrad W. Hall looked at dozens of action films from the 1960s and 1970s, such as the Dirty Harry series, The Getaway, The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, The Godfather and Bonnie and Clyde.

[18] In an interview, Hensleigh also stated the film pays homage to Mad Max and William Shakespeare's Othello, though while he was inspired by Othello, the characters were reversed for the film, making the Punisher the instigator of the jealousy which leads to Howard Saint murdering his best friend and wife.

[14] During shooting of a fight scene, Jane legitimately stabbed Nash in the collarbone with a blunted butterfly knife after a stunt co-ordinator forgot to change the props.

Nash did not break character and continued the scene and accepted cold beers from the crew as compensation.

The website's critical consensus states: "A good cast fails to elevate this overly violent and by-the-numbers revenge flick.

Leydon praises Jane for his "appropriate physicality and brooding gravitas" but criticizes Travolta, saying he does "nothing to inject fresh life into bland archetype".

Making his directorial debut after a successful run as a screenwriter and producer (on projects like Die Hard with a Vengeance, Jumanji, and The Rock) he has clearly conceived The Punisher as a throwback to the leathery, angry urban revenge movies of the 1970s.

[36] An extended cut DVD was released on November 21, 2006 with 17 minutes of additional footage, most of which revolves around the character Jimmy Weeks (Russell Andrews), and Castle realizing that it was his friend who had sold him out to Howard Saint.

Features also include a black-and-white stop-motion animated scene, set in Kuwait, based on and partially done by artist Tim Bradstreet, and a Punisher comic book gallery.

An extended version of "In Time" by Mark Collie also appears in the closing credits of the extended-cut DVD.

The Punisher was released via Blu-ray Disc on June 27, 2006 and 4K UHD on September 25, 2018, both only including the theatrical cut.

Director Jonathan Hensleigh wanted the music to be very emotional, and was aware of Siliotto's previous work which led to him being chosen.

John Dahl was in talks to direct the film but pulled out due to script quality issues and the studio not wanting to spend a lot of money on the project.

In July 2012, Jane reprised his role as Frank Castle in the unofficial sequel short film The Punisher: Dirty Laundry, which premiered at San Diego Comic-Con.