• Marvel released a new behind-the-scenes featurette highlighting practical stunt work in Spider-Man: Brand New Day
• Tom Holland says the film has “some of the best action” in any Spider-Man movie, with the most stunts shot in-camera
• Director Destin Daniel Cretton confirms the sequence — featuring a tank chase on Edinburgh streets dressed as New York — is the film’s opening action set piece
• Spider-Man: Brand New Day opens July 31 and stars Holland, Zendaya, Jon Bernthal, Sadie Sink, and Mark Ruffalo
• The practical effects push comes as Marvel faces ongoing criticism over its CGI quality

Tom Holland is back in the suit — and this time, he’s doing it the old-fashioned way. Marvel has dropped a new behind-the-scenes featurette for Spider-Man: Brand New Day, and it’s exactly the kind of footage that Marvel fans have been quietly desperate to see: real wires, real stunts, real chaos.

In the clip, Holland doesn’t hold back. “This is some of the best action that we’ve had in any of these movies,” he says. “And we shot the most stunts on the day in camera.” The footage backs him up — we see Spidey getting whipped around on rigging, thrown backwards into a truck, riding what appears to be an army tank through the streets, and cars exploding around him in sequences that look genuinely physical rather than stitched together in post.

Director Destin Daniel Cretton, who took over the franchise after Jon Watts departed, describes what we’re seeing as the film’s opening action sequence — so this is how Brand New Day announces itself right out of the gate. He also noted that hundreds of fans showed up on set to watch the stunts being filmed live, something he said meant a great deal to him and the entire crew.

A Fresh Start for Peter Parker

The practical emphasis makes sense given where the story picks up. Four years after the events of No Way Home, Peter Parker is living entirely alone — no Tony Stark tech, no Iron Spider suit, no one who even remembers who he is. He voluntarily erased himself from the lives of everyone he loves, and now he’s just a full-time Spider-Man in a city that doesn’t know his name. The official description promises that “the pressure sparks a surprising physical evolution that threatens his existence” as he faces one of the most powerful threats he’s ever encountered.

That stripped-down premise — which began with Peter literally sewing his own costume at a sewing machine in a crappy apartment at the end of No Way Home — makes the practical, grounded approach to the action feel like a deliberate creative statement. This isn’t the polished Avengers-era Spider-Man. This is a kid figuring it out.

Marvel also released a new poster alongside the featurette — a close-up of Holland’s face, the bottom half visible below the mask, Spider-Man’s suit filling most of the frame. Simple, striking, and a clean visual promise of what the film is going for.

Why This Matters Right Now

The timing of this featurette is pointed. Marvel’s visual effects have taken a beating from fans and critics for years, with particularly rough shots from Black Widow, Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, and Thor: Love and Thunder becoming something of a running internet joke. That criticism has only deepened alongside reporting on how Marvel treats its VFX vendors — including recent fan reactions to CGI in The Punisher: One Last Kill that went viral for all the wrong reasons.

Against that backdrop, a featurette that essentially says “we built this for real” isn’t just a marketing beat — it’s a message. The footage of the tank rolling down an Edinburgh street (dressed to look like New York) with Holland on top of it is exactly the kind of image that travels. Fans on set, watching it happen in person, only adds to that.

The film’s cast is stacked: Zendaya returns as MJ, Jacob Batalon is back as Ned, Jon Bernthal reprises Frank Castle/The Punisher (whose One Last Kill special sets up some complicated dynamics heading into this film), Michael Mando is on board as Scorpion, Tramell Tillman plays Department of Damage Control boss Bill Metzger, and Mark Ruffalo appears as Bruce Banner — with strong hints he’ll also show up green.

Then there’s Sadie Sink, whose role remains officially undisclosed — though fans have been obsessively cross-referencing every behind-the-scenes detail, including a yellow jacket she was spotted wearing on set, trying to crack it. So far, Marvel’s keeping that one close.

Spider-Man: Brand New Day swings into theaters on July 31.

The post Spider-Man: Brand New Day Goes Practical With Stunts appeared first on Cream.

• Sony and Marvel released a new behind-the-scenes teaser for Spider-Man: Brand New Day, showing off practical stunt work filmed in London and Edinburgh
• Tom Holland says the film has “the best action we’ve had in any of these movies,” with more on-camera stunts than any previous Marvel production
• Director Destin Daniel Cretton confirms the tank sequence — first seen in set photos — is the movie’s opening action scene
• Early test screening reactions are calling it the best Spider-Man film ever made
• Spider-Man: Brand New Day hits theaters July 31, 2026

Two months out from its July 31 release, Spider-Man: Brand New Day is already making some very big promises — and early signs suggest it might actually keep them.

Sony Pictures and Marvel Studios dropped a new behind-the-scenes featurette this week, titled “Practical Production,” giving fans their best look yet at the real, on-location stunt work that forms the backbone of the MCU’s fourth solo Spider-Man film. Tom Holland and director Destin Daniel Cretton both appear in the clip, talking up what sounds like the most physically ambitious Spidey movie to date.

“This is some of the best action that we’ve had in any of these movies,” Holland says in the video. “We’ve shot the most stunts on the day in camera. Putting Spider-Man on the street with cars exploding. It’s just so awesome. It’s going to allow the audience to be part of the experience.”

That’s a bold statement from a guy who’s already swung through two MCU trilogies and a multiverse event — but watching the footage, it’s hard to argue. The teaser shows real web-swinging through city streets, practical effects, and what looks like full-scale chaos with actual vehicles. No volume stage, no green screen safety net. Just Spidey on the ground, in the mix.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=6GW4JPeqm3s%3Fsi%3DK9YW-0qtTaFwaByF

The Opening Scene That Stopped Traffic in Edinburgh

Cretton, who previously delivered some of Marvel’s most inventive action sequences with Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings, revealed that the sequence featured in the teaser — the now-famous tank scene that drew massive crowds when it filmed on location in Edinburgh, Scotland, dressed up as New York — is actually the film’s opening action set piece. He described it as “exhilarating” to shoot, and noted it was the very first thing they filmed for the movie.

“One of the results of that was that we were seeing thousands of people showing up to watch us work,” Cretton said. “It was a really lovely reminder to us how much this movie means to a lot of people in the world.”

Eagle-eyed fans watching the featurette closely will also catch something interesting: at one point, Peter is seen wearing a puffer vest jacket and hat over his suit — a cold-weather disguise that looks remarkably similar to what Andrew Garfield’s Spider-Man wore in The Amazing Spider-Man 2. Whether it’s a deliberate nod or a happy coincidence, it’s the kind of detail that’s going to send corners of the internet into a spiral for the next few weeks.

Also worth noting: new Halloween costume merchandise from Rubies has given fans a surprisingly detailed look at Peter’s new web-shooters for the film. They’re clunky, homemade, and a far cry from the Stark Industries tech he’s used before — which lines up with the movie’s premise of a Peter Parker who is fully on his own, with no Tony Stark safety net. The official plot description confirms that Peter undergoes some kind of unexpected “physical evolution” during the film, and the web-shooters appear to be edited out of several scenes in the existing trailer, suggesting they won’t be around for long before something bigger takes over.

A Fresh Poster and a Story That Starts From Zero

Alongside the featurette, Sony also unveiled a new poster — easily the closest look we’ve gotten at Holland’s suit in the film. It’s a clean, striking design: the bottom half of his face visible beneath the mask, the suit dominating the frame. Simple, but it hits. The accompanying tagline says everything about where this story is headed: “The world has forgotten Peter Parker, but he hasn’t forgotten them.”

Set four years after the events of No Way Home, Brand New Day finds Peter living completely alone, having erased himself from the memories of everyone he loves — including Zendaya’s MJ and Jacob Batalon’s Ned. He’s a full-time Spider-Man now, protecting a city that doesn’t know his name. Holland has spoken about how much that emotional reality drives the story.

“I think what Peter Parker is going through post-Spider-Man: No Way Home is really profound and unique to the superhero genre,” Holland previously said. “The thing I’m most excited about with Brand New Day is I think more so than any of our previous movies, New York is really a key character in the fabric of this movie.”

He’s also described the film as being about “finding their identity and becoming adults” — and for Peter specifically, that means “learning to really find an identity” while dealing with a physical change that threatens his existence and a wave of crime that brings some genuinely dangerous new threats to his doorstep.

A Stacked Cast and Some Very Intriguing Additions

The film brings back Holland, Zendaya, and Batalon, and adds a lineup that reads like a street-level MCU dream team. Michael Mando returns as Scorpion, Marvin Jones III plays Tombstone, and Mark Ruffalo is in as Bruce Banner — with promo art already showing the Hulk alongside Spider-Man, suggesting Banner won’t just be sitting this one out. Tramell Tillman plays Department of Damage Control boss Bill Metzger, setting up what sounds like an institutional antagonist alongside the physical threats.

Jon Bernthal is back as Frank Castle, and the recently released Disney+ short film The Punisher: One Last Kill does important work resetting Frank’s status quo ahead of his appearance here. In that special, Frank wrestles with whether to hang up the skull after completing his revenge mission, ultimately recommitting to being a street-level protector. Bernthal has talked about the challenge of bridging the tonal gap between the two projects. “With Spider-Man, I think what was most important — because, obviously, tonally it’s different and such an honor to be a part of it, especially with my dear friend Tom Holland — it was important to us that one Punisher could walk off one set and walk onto the other,” he said.

And then there’s Sadie Sink, whose role remains officially undisclosed but has become one of the most discussed mysteries in Marvel fandom right now. Many believe she’s playing Jean Grey — a mutant fugitive with telekinetic powers — and there’s a rumor circulating that Bernthal’s Punisher may be acting as her protector in the film, a dynamic that would make a lot of sense given what One Last Kill established about Frank’s instinct to shield people who remind him of his daughter.

The Test Screening Buzz Is Extremely Loud

Cretton confirmed that test screenings have already taken place, and that he was very pleased with how audiences responded. But the reactions going around are something beyond diplomatic studio-speak.

Insider John Campea reported that the responses were “beyond excellent” and better than the studio had hoped for. Scooper MTTSH went further, sharing that people who attended are calling Brand New Day “the greatest Spider-Man movie” yet. Test screening hyperbole is real, and a self-selected audience is not general audiences — but it’s worth pointing out that early test screening reports are often mixed, so uniformly glowing reactions do mean something.

Rumblings are also growing that a full new trailer is imminent, possibly attached to The Mandalorian and Grogu when it opens next weekend. Given that the first Brand New Day trailer broke records for trailer viewership when it dropped in March, the appetite for more footage is clearly not going anywhere.

Spider-Man: Brand New Day is directed by Destin Daniel Cretton and written by Chris McKenna and Erik Sommers. It opens July 31, 2026.

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• The Punisher: One Last Kill is now streaming on Disney+ — Jon Bernthal’s 48-minute solo special is Marvel’s most violent project yet
• Frank Castle hits rock bottom after wiping out the Gnucci crime family, only for Ma Gnucci (Judith Light) to put a bounty on his head
• The special is co-written and executive-produced by Bernthal alongside director Reinaldo Marcus Green
• Critics are split — Bernthal’s performance is universally praised, but some feel the story retreads familiar ground
• The special bridges Frank’s story between Daredevil: Born Again and this July’s Spider-Man: Brand New Day

Ten years in, Jon Bernthal is still the best thing to ever happen to Frank Castle. The Punisher: One Last Kill — Marvel Television’s latest Special Presentation, now streaming on Disney+ — is a brutal, blood-soaked 48-minute character study that finds the skull-wearing vigilante at his absolute lowest. It is, depending on who you ask, either his finest hour or a well-executed retread. Probably both.

The special opens with Frank in a state most Marvel heroes never get close to. His PTSD has consumed him. He’s haunted by hallucinations of his murdered family, of fallen Marine comrades, of Karen Page (Deborah Ann Woll), of his old friend Curtis Hoyle (Jason R. Moore, returning from the Netflix series). He’s been living in Brooklyn, locked inside his apartment while Little Sicily descends into chaos around him — a power vacuum created by his own hand after he methodically wiped out the Gnucci crime family, the last mob connected to his family’s murders. Mission accomplished. Purpose: gone. And for a man who has been defined entirely by vengeance, peace turns out to be its own kind of nightmare.

“We’re really honing in on him kind of at his end, when he doesn’t know what to do and he’s completely sort of enveloped in hopelessness,” Bernthal told Entertainment Weekly. “That’s kind of the place where this piece picks up.”

It is, as Bernthal describes it in a conversation with Esquire, a story about what happens to special forces veterans when their purpose slips away — a battle, he says, that too often ends in suicide. “You cut ties with every pillar of belief, whether it’s religion, whether it’s the Marine Corps, whether it’s your family,” he said. “Basically anything that was important to you, you start to see as a corruption. You look at yourself as the reasons for the problems in the world around you, and 99 percent of the time it results in suicide.” Dark material for a Disney+ platform that also hosts Bluey and Grogu. Marvel doesn’t care. Neither does Bernthal.

Ma Gnucci Arrives — and Everything Goes to Hell

Just as Frank is staring into the void, Ma Gnucci shows up to push him in. Played by Judith Light — yes, that Judith Light, of Who’s the Boss? and Ugly Betty and Poker Face — the wheelchair-bound matriarch of the surviving Gnucci family confronts Frank with a venomous clarity that briefly turns the special into something almost campy. “A small bounty on your head is all it took,” she tells him. “Every madman, crook, and killer in this neighborhood all worked for us, Frank. And now they’re desperate. I’m the one doing the punishing now.”

Her youngest son Carlo was killed at 6:47 p.m. — a time burned into her memory like a wound. So she publishes Frank’s address to go live at exactly 6:47, inviting every desperate criminal in Little Sicily to collect. Sharp-eyed comics fans will note the number: 647 was the final issue of the Brand New Day comic run in 2010, which then marked the beginning of a new era for Spider-Man. Given that Frank’s next MCU appearance is in Spider-Man: Brand New Day, that’s a very deliberate wink.

What follows is the most sustained, unapologetically brutal action sequence Marvel has ever put on screen. Stripped of his armor and weapons, Frank improvises — fighting floor by floor through his apartment building as professional assassins, street thugs, and ski-mask-wearing nobodies flood the halls armed with axes, machetes, modified machine guns, and sheer desperation. Multiple reviews have compared it to The Raid. There’s also more than a little John Wick in the DNA, plus a gaming-influenced quality to the way Frank cycles through weapons looted off the fallen. He survives a gasoline immolation, a rooftop plummet, and at least one memorably horrifying encounter involving a ballpoint pen. The kill count is, conservatively, somewhere between 30 and 40.

The special’s entire second act — roughly 20 of its 45 story minutes — is this siege. And it works, largely because Bernthal makes you feel the cost of every single one of those kills. He’s not triumphant. He’s desperate. He’s grieving at full sprint.

What the Ending Actually Means

When the dust settles, Frank faces a choice: pursue Ma Gnucci as she drives away, or save deli worker Dre (Andre Royo, The Wire) and his family, who are caught in the crossfire. He chooses the family. Dre’s young daughter Charli (Mila Jaymes) hands him a flower in the aftermath — a small, almost unbearably earnest gesture. Frank later leaves that flower on his daughter’s grave.

It’s heavy-handed, yes. But it lands, because Bernthal earns it. The moment reframes Frank’s entire war: it was never purely about revenge. It was always, at its core, about protecting people who can’t protect themselves. He just forgot that for a while.

Back in his skull vest, Frank then tracks down a hood who killed a fellow veteran’s dog in the special’s opening minutes and deals with him accordingly. He has renewed purpose. He’s ready for whatever comes next.

What comes next is Spider-Man: Brand New Day, in theaters July 31. Trailers show Frank apparently acting as a protector for Sadie Sink’s still-mysterious character — and the version of Frank we leave at the end of One Last Kill is exactly the kind of man who could take on that role. Not a serial killer running out his cooling-off period. A street-level guardian with a brutal code: good guys live, bad guys die. That’s a Frank Castle who can, theoretically, share a scene with Peter Parker.

Director Reinaldo Marcus Green confirmed to MovieWeb that the special takes place after Frank’s escape from Wilson Fisk’s Red Hook prison at the end of Daredevil: Born Again Season 1, and before the events of Brand New Day — with some events running concurrently alongside Born Again Season 2. Notably, the special doesn’t explain why Frank sat out the fight against Mayor Fisk and the Anti-Vigilante Task Force, which is a genuine plot hole several critics have flagged. That thread appears to have been quietly dropped.

The Title Is a Misdirect — On Purpose

Green addressed the head-scratcher of a title directly. “I think it’s one of those situations where you hear it, you’re like, ‘Wait, is this the end of The Punisher?'” he told The Direct. “And when you realize that maybe it’s not, I think that makes it even more cool. It’s a misdirect in the best way.” There is no post-credits scene — the story ends, a title card appears, and that’s it. But the door is conspicuously wide open.

Green and Bernthal have already made clear they want more. “Jon and I would love to make a movie, something that could go worldwide and be on screens everywhere,” Green told The Direct. “But, obviously, that’ll be Marvel’s decision.” Bernthal was equally direct in Esquire: “I’m really down to keep doing more. But I think I have to be the one that’s making it.”

Bernthal Is Magnificent. The Special? Depends Who You Ask.

The critical consensus on One Last Kill is fascinatingly split — not on Bernthal, who everyone agrees is doing career-best work here, but on whether the special needed to exist at all.

Fans who love the character are going to be in heaven. The violence is real, the emotion is real, and Bernthal’s performance in the opening act — as Frank succumbs to his PTSD in an apartment that feels like the inside of his skull — is the kind of acting that doesn’t usually show up in superhero properties. Variety called it a performance that “cements his Punisher as one of Marvel’s most singular.” Multiple reviewers compared the opening’s atmosphere to the beginning of Apocalypse Now.

The more pointed criticism is that this is essentially the same arc Frank already completed in The Punisher Season 2 on Netflix — a man rediscovering his humanity and his higher purpose after losing his way. One Last Kill hits the same emotional beats, arrives at the same conclusion, and leaves Frank in roughly the same place. For anyone who’s followed his story closely, that repetition is hard to ignore. The Wrap called it “more of a Punisher rehash than a refreshing new angle.” SlashFilm went further, calling it “inessential, forgettable, and, at worst, a cautionary tale of superhero stories that are never allowed to end.”

The supporting cast takes some hits too. Judith Light gets two real scenes and is compelling in both, but she’s badly underserved by the runtime. Ma Gnucci is set up as a hateful, fascinating mirror to Frank — two people destroyed by the same cycle of violence, coming at it from opposite sides — and then the special essentially forgets about her before the end. Her survival sets up a sequel beautifully, but it also leaves the special feeling like it’s missing a final act.

What nobody disputes is the craft. Green, who previously directed King Richard and We Own This City (his third collaboration with Bernthal), brings genuine cinematic weight to a Disney+ production. The action sequences are grimy and desperate in a way that feels deliberately distinct from the choreographed hallway fights of the Netflix era. There’s a needle drop of Louis Armstrong’s “La Vie En Rose” over Frank fighting while literally on fire that is, as one reviewer put it, not exactly high art — but absolutely joyful.

The special was built with real input from veterans. Bernthal consulted closely with Marine Raiders Nick Koumalatsos and Cody Alford, and Green Beret Colton Hill — all three of whom were cast in the special as well. “Think about what they go through when they come home from war,” Green told D23. “That was helpful for us in terms of understanding the character and where he’s coming from.”

Marvel TV boss Brad Winderbaum, who revealed the idea for the special came together during production on Born Again, put it simply: “Bernthal is a generational actor. He knows the character inside and out. The idea that he’s in the MCU and can bring that to the greater universe, especially the more grounded street-level stuff, is a huge opportunity and, as a fan, the greatest thing ever.”

That much is inarguable. Whatever you think of the story, there is no version of Frank Castle — not Thomas Jane, not Dolph Lundgren, not Ray Stevenson — who hits like Jon Bernthal hits. When he’s standing over his family’s graves at the end of One Last Kill, flower in hand, the skull vest back on, the war back on — you believe every single second of it.

The Punisher: One Last Kill is streaming now on Disney+. Spider-Man: Brand New Day opens July 31.

The post Jon Bernthal’s Punisher Special Is Brutal, Beautiful, and Sets Up Spider-Man appeared first on Cream.

• Jon Bernthal calls The Punisher: One Last Kill the “most psychologically complex, darkest version” of Frank Castle ever
• The TV-MA rated Disney+ special drops May 12, 2026, directed by Reinaldo Marcus Green
• Bernthal co-wrote the script with real military veterans involved as producers and on-set consultants
• The special bridges the gap between Daredevil: Born Again and Spider-Man: Brand New Day
• Bernthal also appears as a toned-down Punisher in the PG-13 Spider-Man: Brand New Day on July 31

Jon Bernthal isn’t easing back into the skull. When The Punisher: One Last Kill hits Disney+ on May 12, Bernthal says fans are getting the darkest, most psychologically brutal version of Frank Castle that’s ever been put on screen — and he means it.

“It’s the most psychologically complex, darkest version of the Punisher that you’re going to see,” Bernthal told The Kelly Clarkson Show. “I believe it’s what the fans want.”

The TV-MA rated MCU Special Presentation is directed by Reinaldo Marcus Green and picks up the thread left dangling at the end of Daredevil: Born Again Season 1 — specifically that post-credits scene where Frank Castle slipped out of Kingpin’s makeshift prison without freeing anyone, without helping Matt Murdock, and without explanation. One Last Kill is where those answers live.

Veterans at the Core of Frank’s Story

What makes this one feel different isn’t just the rating or the darkness — it’s where Bernthal went to find the soul of it. He co-wrote the script with Green, but the real emotional foundation came from working alongside Nick Koumalatsos, a Marine Raider who wrote a book about his own battle with pain and hopelessness, and who serves as a producer on the project.

“It was such an honour,” Bernthal said. “Cody Alford, a Marine Raider, and Colton Hill, a Green Beret, were on set. They’re badass. They’re more than badass. They’re just beautiful human beings, and they really wanted to do something for the veterans community — especially for these guys, the tip of the spear guys who are really suffering when entering back into the world. And I think that’s very much at the core of a Frank story.”

It’s a grounding that the character has always deserved. Frank Castle’s tragedy has never just been about violence — it’s about a man who was built for war and doesn’t know how to exist outside of it. Wrapping that story around real voices from that world gives One Last Kill a weight that goes beyond comic book spectacle.

The official synopsis keeps it simple: “As Frank Castle searches for meaning beyond revenge, an unexpected force pulls him back into the fight.” But Born Again showrunner Dario Scardapane has offered a fuller picture of what this special actually is in the MCU timeline. “I think this tells the story of what happened next after Punisher [Season 2] and before and during the events of [Born Again] Season 2,” he said — suggesting the special is doing a lot of narrative heavy lifting, tying up loose ends from Frank’s Netflix run while bridging him into his big-screen future.

Two Very Different Punishers, Same Year

Here’s the wild thing about 2026: audiences are going to see two completely different versions of Frank Castle within about two and a half months of each other. The savage, unfiltered one arrives May 12 on Disney+. Then, on July 31, Bernthal shows up in the PG-13 world of Spider-Man: Brand New Day alongside Tom Holland’s Peter Parker — and the tonal gap between those two projects is enormous.

Bernthal addressed that shift head-on. “With Spider-Man, I think what was most important — because, obviously, tonally it’s different, and such an honour to be a part of it, especially with my dear friend Tom Holland — it was important to us that one Punisher could walk off one set and walk onto the other. Tonally, they couldn’t be more different, but I hope we were able to achieve that. It’s very important.”

There’s already a glimpse of what that dynamic looks like — reportedly, Spider-Man webs the Punisher’s mouth shut at some point to stop him from swearing, which tells you everything about the energy of that pairing. It’s a long way from TV-MA brutality, but Bernthal seems genuinely invested in making both versions of Castle feel like the same man.

The path here is worth appreciating. Bernthal first played Frank Castle in Daredevil on Netflix back in 2016, got his own two-season solo series, and was widely considered one of the best castings in the Marvel Netflix era. When he came back for Daredevil: Born Again Season 1 last year, the fan response was electric. Now he’s got a solo special, a co-writing credit, and a summer blockbuster on the way — all in the same calendar year.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=M3ARHSIydqY%3Fsi%3DJGiRlbb4EP2pITzP

Kevin Feige, Louis D’Esposito, Brad Winderbaum, Sana Amanat, Bernthal, and Green all serve as executive producers on One Last Kill, with Trevor Waterson as co-executive producer. The social embargo lifts May 11 at 5pm PT, with reviews going live the following evening.

The Punisher: One Last Kill arrives on Disney+ on May 12.

The post Jon Bernthal Promises Darkest Punisher Yet in One Last Kill appeared first on Cream.

• Charlie Cox hinted Daredevil could cross over into Spider-Man: Brand New Day, saying it’s now “on the table”
• The Born Again Season 2 finale ends with Matt Murdock in prison — right as Brand New Day’s trailer shows Spider-Man fighting The Hand inside a prison
• Insider Alex Perez claims Daredevil is not in Brand New Day, and the prison breakout is for a different character
• Jon Bernthal’s Punisher is confirmed for the film, maintaining a strong Daredevil-to-Spider-Man thread
• Spider-Man: Brand New Day hits theaters July 31, directed by Destin Daniel Cretton

Charlie Cox isn’t saying yes. He’s not saying no. And honestly, that’s more than enough to send Marvel fans into a spiral.

With Spider-Man: Brand New Day arriving July 31 and the Daredevil: Born Again Season 2 finale still fresh, Cox opened up to The Wrap about the possibility of Matt Murdock showing up in Tom Holland’s fourth Spider-Man adventure — and his answer was carefully, tantalizingly vague.

“I mean, I went on Jimmy Kimmel last week, the second half of the interview is him trying to get out of me whether I’m in Spider-Man,” Cox said, laughing off the scrutiny. He acknowledged that back in the Netflix days, these kinds of crossovers were essentially off the table from a business standpoint. But things have changed. “Now that we are — having made these kind of mini-splashes with me in Spider-Man: No Way Home, Vincent in Hawkeye and Echo, it’s on the table, it’s on the cards. It’s possible, it’s available, and Jon [Bernthal] now going into Spider-Man: Brand New Day as well.”

He went further: “It’d be so cool to kind of have some kind of crossover with all of the Avengers, with Spider-Man as Daredevil, rather than as Matt Murdock — all of that kind of stuff.”

Fans heard every word of it.

The Born Again Finale Just Made Things Way More Interesting

The timing of Cox’s comments couldn’t be more loaded. The Daredevil: Born Again Season 2 finale dropped Matt Murdock into an orange jumpsuit and a prison cell after he publicly outed himself as Daredevil to take down Kingpin and save Karen. Wilson Fisk, meanwhile, is forced to step down as Mayor of New York and leave the country — with his Chief of Staff Sheila Rivera (Zabryna Guevara) stepping into the role, a character who also appears in the Brand New Day trailer handing Spider-Man the keys to the city.

The dominoes are clearly falling between these two corners of the MCU. And then there’s the trailer.

The first Spider-Man: Brand New Day trailer shows Peter Parker fighting ninjas from The Hand — inside a prison. The Hand, for those keeping score, are classic Daredevil villains who featured heavily in Born Again‘s second season. Put a freshly imprisoned Matt Murdock together with a prison full of Hand assassins and Spider-Man swinging in, and you’ve got a crossover moment practically writing itself.

“Many moons ago, I would’ve believed that Daredevil wasn’t actually in Spider-Man: Brand New Day. But no. He’s absolutely in it. There’s physically no world where they don’t overlap,” one fan wrote on X. “It’s literally The Hand in a prison.”

But an Insider Is Pumping the Brakes

Here’s where it gets complicated. The Cosmic Circus’ Alex Perez, who has a track record with Marvel scoops, posted on X urging fans to dial back their expectations. “I’m going to need everyone to place their expectations close to [zero] for anyone expecting Peter to break Matt out of prison in Spider-Man: Brand New Day,” Perez wrote. “This breakout’s for another character [and] Matt’s still in prison when Daredevil: Born Again Season 3 starts.”

He then added a sharper detail: Daredevil “is not even in that prison to begin with.”

That’s a pretty definitive claim — and it tracks with what Cox himself said earlier this year. On the Happy Sad Confused podcast, he confirmed he wasn’t in the film and doubled down: “Marvel have been clear with me for now, at least, that I’m focusing on the show, that’s our focus. That really is the truth.” He was also deep in production on Born Again Season 2 while Brand New Day was shooting, which is part of why Bernthal was absent from the Daredevil series this time around.

Of course, this being Marvel, “that really is the truth” and a surprise cameo are not mutually exclusive concepts.

The Punisher Is the Real Bridge — For Now

Whatever happens with Daredevil, the confirmed Daredevil-to-Spider-Man pipeline runs directly through Jon Bernthal’s Frank Castle. The Punisher is officially part of Brand New Day‘s cast, and the trailer shows Spider-Man addressing him as “Frank” — implying a familiarity between the two that the film will presumably explain. It raises an interesting question about what exactly Peter Parker was doing during Fisk’s anti-vigilante mayoral campaign, and whether Frank was part of that story off-screen.

The full cast for Brand New Day, directed by Destin Daniel Cretton and written by Chris McKenna and Erik Sommers, also includes Zendaya, Jacob Batalon, Tramell Tillman, Michael Mando, and Mark Ruffalo. The film picks up four years after No Way Home, with Peter now living alone in a New York that no longer remembers his name — and dealing with what the studio describes as “an unexpected physical change” and a dangerous new wave of crime.

As for Daredevil’s future beyond this film, Born Again Season 3 is already in production, with Cox currently on set. The season is tracking for a March 2027 release, and Cox teased that it draws from a beloved comic run. “There is an excellent Daredevil run in the comics that this season, at least at the beginning, pays homage to,” he said. “When I knew about that, I was very excited, because it’s a very, very cool storyline.”

Matt Murdock may not be breaking out of prison in Brand New Day. But something tells us the Man Without Fear isn’t staying in that cell forever.

The post Charlie Cox Teases Daredevil Role in Spider-Man: Brand New Day appeared first on Cream.

• Joe Russo confirms that in his and Anthony’s vision, MCU Peter Parker was NOT responsible for Uncle Ben’s death
• The revelation comes during a CBR interview marking Captain America: Civil War’s 10th anniversary
• Russo says Tom Holland’s personality as an actor drove the decision — guilt would have made him “a very different character”
• The MCU shifted Peter’s defining trauma to Aunt May’s death in Spider-Man: No Way Home instead
• Spider-Man: Brand New Day hits theaters July 31, 2026, with the Uncle Ben mystery still unresolved

Ten years after Tom Holland first swung into the MCU in Captain America: Civil War, Joe Russo has confirmed what many fans long suspected but never had spelled out: the MCU’s version of Peter Parker was never responsible for Uncle Ben’s death. Not negligence. Not a criminal he let walk. Just loss — clean, accidental, and guilt-free.

Speaking with CBR as part of a retrospective interview marking Civil War’s 10th anniversary, Joe Russo explained the thinking behind what is arguably the biggest single change ever made to Spider-Man’s mythology on screen.

“Spider-Man was one of my favorite characters growing up, if not my favorite,” Russo said. “And what I related to was this idea of a kid with incredible responsibility, right? And I think you could manifest that responsibility through accidental death, right? And feeling the pressure, and the sense of loss in your life in a way that would keep the spirit that we wanted. [But] what Tom Holland is as an actor, if he blamed himself for his Uncle Ben’s death, I think he becomes a very different character. So in our minds, no, he wasn’t responsible for Uncle Ben’s death. That would have been a different interpretation. A more intense interpretation of the character.”

It’s a candid admission — and a fascinating one. For a decade, the assumption was that the MCU had simply skipped the origin story everyone already knew. Turned out the Russos weren’t skipping it so much as quietly rewriting it.

The Most Important Line in Spider-Man History — and What It Means Here

In the comics, and in both previous film series, the death of Uncle Ben is the cornerstone of Peter Parker’s entire identity. Ben is murdered by a criminal Peter could have stopped but chose not to. That guilt — the weight of inaction — is what turns a kid with superpowers into a superhero. It’s the reason “with great power comes great responsibility” hits as hard as it does. Tobey Maguire’s Peter lived with that guilt. So did Andrew Garfield’s.

Holland’s Peter, apparently, does not.

The MCU has been deliberately vague about Uncle Ben since the beginning. We know he’s dead before Civil War begins. There’s a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it reference in Spider-Man: Homecoming when Peter tells Ned he can’t reveal his secret identity after “everything they’ve been through,” and Far From Home showed Peter’s luggage monogrammed with “BFR” — the initials of Benjamin Franklin Parker. But the character has never been named on screen in a live-action MCU film, and the iconic line was never connected to him. The only times “Uncle Ben” has actually been spoken in the MCU were by Tobey Maguire’s Spider-Man in No Way Home, and in the animated What If…? Marvel Zombies episode featuring a variant of Holland’s Peter.

What’s interesting is that Civil War itself seemed to tease the traditional origin. During Peter’s first meeting with Tony Stark, he says: “When you can do the things that I can, but you don’t, and then the bad things happen, they happen because of you.” That line felt like a direct nod to Ben’s death. Apparently, the script left it deliberately ambiguous — and now we know why.

How the MCU Replaced Uncle Ben With Aunt May

Rather than leave Peter without a defining loss, the MCU built toward one slowly — and then delivered it in Spider-Man: No Way Home. It was Aunt May (Marisa Tomei) who died at the hands of Willem Dafoe’s Green Goblin. And it was May who, in her final moments, delivered the line: “With great power comes great responsibility.” The MCU transferred the emotional weight of Uncle Ben’s death onto her entirely, and it worked — even if it’s a very different kind of grief. Peter didn’t fail to stop a criminal. He watched someone he loved die in a fight he brought to her door.

That guilt, combined with the spell that erased Peter from everyone’s memory, is what sets the stage for Spider-Man: Brand New Day, arriving July 31, 2026. Director Destin Daniel Cretton is taking over from Jon Watts, and Peter is entering this chapter more isolated and more burdened than ever. Whether Cretton’s vision aligns with the Russos’ interpretation of Uncle Ben — or whether a future MCU project finally addresses what actually happened to him — remains one of the more intriguing loose threads in the franchise.

It’s worth remembering that the Russos’ take is their own creative interpretation, not an official Marvel Studios mandate. Joe and Anthony directed Peter’s introduction in Civil War, but they didn’t helm the Homecoming trilogy. Whether Jon Watts or Cretton have ever thought about Ben’s fate differently, we don’t know. The MCU has simply never committed either way on screen.

The Behind-the-Scenes Drama That Almost Kept Spider-Man Out of the MCU

The Civil War anniversary interview also surfaced another remarkable detail: just how close the whole thing came to never happening at all.

Anthony Russo recalled the tension of building a movie around a character they weren’t sure they’d be allowed to use. “Not only did the idea of Civil War scare parts of Marvel, because we were turning Tony Stark, their most popular character in the MCU, into an antagonist in the film. The introducing Spider-Man within this movie was very controversial because Sony had the rights to that character.”

“When we started to execute it creatively with writers Markus and McFeely, there was no business agreement that we could use Spider-Man,” Anthony continued. “So that became a bit of a process where we really had to hold out for that character. In fact, there were a couple of weeks where we didn’t even come in to work on the movie because that issue hadn’t been resolved yet.”

Joe added a detail that makes the whole thing feel almost absurdly close to the wire: “If I remember correctly, Sony and Disney didn’t sign the deal officially until like a day before [Holland] was on camera, or something crazy like that. There was a reason that we couldn’t talk about it, because it still could have blown up at the last second!”

A deal signed the day before filming. A superhero origin quietly rewritten. Ten years later, we’re still unpacking the decisions made in those rooms.

As Brand New Day approaches — bringing with it the Punisher, The Hand, a new mayor of New York, and a Peter Parker who has lost nearly everything — the question of Uncle Ben feels more relevant than ever. The MCU has carried this mystery for a decade. Whether they finally answer it, or let it stay buried, might tell us everything about who this version of Spider-Man is really meant to be.

The post Russo Brothers Finally Confirm MCU Changed Spider-Man’s Origin appeared first on Cream.