Kurt Sutter, who wrote the first draft of the screenplay for Punisher: War Zone, has removed his name from credit arbitration from the film. According to two posts on his personal blog, the writer has chosen to take his name off the film for several reasons.

The first of these reasons, as he explains here is that he didn't deserve credit. The shooting script ended up being significantly different than the one he turned in, and as he says, "There was very little of my draft that stayed in the shooting script." He also claims that he didn't want the credit. His vision of Frank Castle was significantly more realistic than the one they ended up filming. Sutter says that the film they made was a more traditional superhero movie, and one that he suspects will easily leave the door open for a third Punisher movie.

In a second post, Sutter defended his actions, stating that it wasn't a case of him angrily washing his hands of the project. He says that he still believes the film will be well made, and will be fun, it just wasn't the script he wrote. Besides, he writes "I thought this was obvious, but for the record, after arbitration I WOULD NOT have gotten credit anyhow. So I didn't "pull my name off the script", I removed my name from arbitration. It was just my way of taking some control of the situation. Didn't want the WGA to waste their time or insult the other writers who did the majority of the work. I thought it was the high road, but maybe not."

Punisher: War Zone stars Ray Stevenson, Dominic West, Doug Hutchinson, Wayne Knight, Dash Mihok, Colin Salmon and Julie Benz, and was directed by Lexi Alexander. The films explodes into theatres September 12, 2008.