So I kinda took off early on Friday because, you know, I had a hot date and junk (and of course by “hot date” I mean I had a hot pocket cooking in the microwave), so I missed a lot of news that landed on the Internet that day. One of those big news was that director Lexi Alexander and Lionsgate (with Marvel Studios in the wing) were having something of a spat. Namely: Lexi Alexander is now rumored to have been kicked off the project, and that Lionsgate is bringing new people in to recut the film. All of this, it would appear, stemmed from the negative reaction to the first trailer for “Punisher: War Zone”, the reboot/not-really-sequel to 2004’s “The Punisher” with Thomas Jane.

The news of Lexi Alexander’s departure from “War Zone” comes via the geeks over at AICN, who had this to say on the mess:

Lexi Alexander has been kicked to the curb - part of that treatment was her “honeymoon” from Comic Con. However, there’s more totally awesome wedding gifts that Lionsgate has given the blushing bride. She’s off the movie and wrapped up in a non-disclosure clause - so we won’t be hearing from her anytime soon, UNLESS THINGS CHANGE RADICALLY - but Lionsgate isn’t necessarily known for calming down. They’ve decided to market it HARD CORE - and they’ve decided to jettison the composer for the film in lieu of loud thrashing metal, because nothing says PUNISHER like raspy amps.

And just to confirm that what AICN says is true, Lexi Alexander has pulled all the posts from her personal blog (she had previously written posts singing the movie praises) and replaced them with three monkeys. (”See no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil.” Get it?) I mean, there is nothing Punisher-related there now. Not a single thing. It’s as if she’s excised the entire movie from her existence.

And here I was getting kind of psyched for the film after seeing the Red Band trailer.

But hey, maybe this will teach Marvel Studios to stop messing with all these reboot shit. You’ve got an entire library of some of the best characters you haven’t even tapped yet, geniuses, how about making movies based on them instead of going back a few years and redoing movies you think could be improved upon.

Below: ex-director Lexi Alexander (the hot chick in the middle), and the (new) Punisher himself, Ray Stevenson, at the right, goofing off in happier times on the set of “Punisher: War Zone”. Oh, those were the days…