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The upcoming "Punisher: War Zone" movie is taking a beating and may turn into as ugly of a mess as disfigured archenemy Jigsaw's face by the time the movie hits the big screen.

Airlock Alpha had previously reported that Punisher was going to get more adult with the influence of Garth Ennis' very dark take on the Punisher, but boy have things changed since then.

It started when Thomas Jane, who played Frank Castle/Punisher in the previous Punisher film, opted to leave "War Zone" and was replaced by Ray Stevenson ("Rome").

Then, Lionsgate allegedly removed director Lexi Alexander from post-production. Her Web site seemed to confirm the news with a cryptic message on her blog showing a picture of three monkeys in ?See no evil, Hear no evil, Speak no evil? pose.

Things turned out to be a little more complicated than that, because CHUD later reported that Lexi is still on-board and that the story was meant to drum up publicity. But, her website was updated with just a few vague words that seemed to imply that the post-production phase wasn't easy going.

Now Latino Review is saying that an inside source tells them that Lionsgate is having a big internal battle over editing 'War Zone' down to PG-13. Apparently "Dark Knight" making record profits at a PG-13 rating is tempting Lionsgate to try and do the same thing.

One would think turning a superhero comic book like Punisher into a live-action film would be easy. It is basically a gritty modern-day vigilante action film, but Punisher has had a history of trouble.

The first "Punisher" movie had Dolph Lundgren as Frank Castle and it was considered a flop. The second film starring Thomas Jane did better in sales, but some fans felt that it missed the mark.

It will be interesting to see how this latest attempt at adapting Punisher will do both in the box office and with die-hard comic book fans. Especially considering it will be released post-Thanksgiving weekend, which is considered one of the worst weekends in the year for ticket sales.

"Punisher: War Zone" will "punish" U.S. theaters Dec. 5.

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