Details about Brand New Day, the fourth Tom Holland/MCU Spider-Man movie, have been basically nil ever since the project went from “thing Tom Holland was constantly getting asked about maybe happening” to “thing Tom Holland now constantly gets asked about definitely happening.” We know Holland’s in it; we known that Spidey co-stars Zendaya and Jacob Batalon would pop up in it somewhere; we knew Stranger Things‘ Sadie Sink was somehow on board—and that was pretty much it. Now, though, THR has a new piece of casting information, and it is, as they say, a doozy: Turns out Jon Bernthal will also be appearing in the film, suggesting somebody in this movie’s definitely getting punished.
Bernthal made his formal entry into the Marvel Cinematic Universe earlier this year, when he appeared as Frank “The Punisher” Castle in Disney+ series Daredevil: Born Again. That version of the character appeared to have been imported pretty much wholesale from Bernthal’s earlier Netflix turns as the character, completely with no compunctions at all about killing anyone he deemed in need of punishment. Which is going to make for some interesting contrasts, when he runs into whatever’s going on with Holland’s Peter Parker in this latest film.
The two characters have bumped heads frequently in comics, of course: Frank debuted, back in 1974, as a Spider-Man villain, his ruthlessness contrasting with Peter’s baked-in idealism. Given how much the most recent Spider-Man film, No Way Home, put its title character through the ringer, though—stripping him of loved ones and his public identity as a hero, and pushing him almost to the point of murder—it’ll be interesting to see how the two approaches to ground-level superhero work conflict. (Things should presumably be more copacetic on set; Bernthal and Holland are reportedly old friends, having each helped the other rehearse for their auditions for their respective superhero roles.)
Brand New Day is currently sitting on the Marvel calendar with a July 31, 2026 release date; Bernthal, meanwhile, is expected to also reprise his role as Castle for Born Again‘s second season, as well as a standalone Punisher feature.
