Chris Pratt is in a seemingly very odd movie coming out this weekend, one called Mercy, in which he plays a man who must prove that he didn’t murder his wife in front of an AI judge played by Rebecca Ferguson. No critic reviews are in despite the movie being out in just a few days, and ticket presales are reportedly extremely low. And the poster is well, look at it:
In doing promotion for the film, Pratt was asked about a dream role he’d like to play by Screentime, and he picked another Marvel part after his very long tenure as Star-Lord in the MCU. That would be The Punisher.
“Punisher,” he said when asked. “He was my favorite comic book hero growing up, so I’ve always loved Punisher. I get to kind of play a version of The Punisher with James Reece in The Terminal List, but yeah, The Punisher.”
Pratt’s high-action, bullet-slinging, comedy-free show The Terminal List was, in fact, a big hit for Amazon Prime Video back in 2022, but it has taken ages to get season 2 out, which reportedly filmed recently and may be out by the end of this year, four years on.
The Punisher, of course, already has an actor in the MCU, Jon Bernthal. Bernthal has a long, long tenure as the MCU Punisher, going all the way back to the Netflix series in 2017. Now, almost ten years later, he reappeared in Daredevil: Born Again, will be in season 2, has his own Disney Plus special coming, and even made it into Spider-Man: Brand New Day somehow.
Before that, we had three other Punishers: Warzone’s Ray Stevenson in 2008, the well-liked Thomas Jane 2004, and way earlier than that 1989’s Dolph Lundgren.
It’s just a…bit of an unexpected answer from Pratt, but you can see in his filmography he’s trying to break out from always playing a comedic action hero like he was in the MCU (and he’s supposed to return at some point). The Terminal List is probably the best example of that. His time in Jurassic Park was not especially funny either. Same for the forgotten-about Tomorrow War. He did manage to snag the unexpected role of Mario in The Super Mario Bros. Movie, which was made fun of, but he did a good enough job, and that movie made $1.36 billion with a Pratt-starring sequel on the way. Who’s laughing now?
The Terminal List season 2 is going to be big for Amazon, as I’m not quite sure people know how much of a hit that was. I feel like the “very online” crowd gives him a hard time (recently, for his politics), but he’s still a draw. For Mercy? Well, I don’t know about that one. And I wouldn’t expect to see him as Punisher, well, ever.
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Source: https://www.forbes.com/sites/paultassi/2026/01/20/chris-pratt-wants-to-play-the-punisher/