Published Oct 11, 2026, 4:00 AM EDT
Adam Blevins began working in the entertainment industry in 2022 as a Staff Writer for Agents of Fandom, where he progressed to Senior Editor and interviewed talent from Marvel Studios, House of the Dragon, and Planet of the Apes. He joined Collider as a News Author in April 2024, was promoted to a Senior position in December 2024, and has written over 3,000 articles for the site, including exclusives relating to Avengers: Doomsday, The Penguin, Star Wars: Skeleton Crew, and more. He primarily writes about the latest box office numbers and the hottest movies and TV shows on streaming, while also covering superhero and sci-fi news. He has completed a set visit for The Chosen and even has several months of experience writing Gaming Features at ScreenRant. You can find him on X, LinkedIn, and Muckrack.
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2026 has been the year of Jon Bernthal so far on the big screen and on streaming. Bernthal has starred in not one, but two of the biggest movies of the year. He teamed up with acclaimed director Christopher Nolan for the highest-grossing R-rated movie of all-time in The Odyssey, which shattered dozens of records at the box office — it’s also expected to be a major contender at the Oscars next year. Bernthal then reunited with The Odyssey star Tom Holland for Spider-Man: Brand New Day, which is both the highest-grossing film in domestic box office history and one of the few movies to ever reach $2.5 billion at the box office. Earlier in the year, he starred in his first solo Frank Castle project in the MCU, The Punisher: One Last Kill.
Jon Bernthal may be best known for playing The Punisher in the Netflix Marvel franchise and later the MCU, but he’s also starred in dozens of famous projects over the years both in leading and supporting roles. Back in 2018, Bernthal was one of many names who starred in Steve McQueen’s absurdly star-studded crime thriller, Widows. The film features one of the most impressive ensembles ever assembled, with Viola Davis, Liam Neeson, and Michelle Rodriguez in leading roles, along with Manuel Garcia-Rulfo, Elizabeth Debicki, Carrie Coon, Robert Duvall, Colin Farrell, Brian Tyree Henry, and Daniel Kaluuya all in supporting roles. Nearly 10 years after Widows failed to break even at the box office, grossing only $75 million against a $42 million budget, the film is officially available to stream for free via the platform Pluto TV, which doesn’t even require an account, only for its users to watch ads.
Four action series. One of them is built around exactly the way you handle pressure, people, and a room that has just gone very quiet. Here is where you would survive the trilogy, and probably headline it.
You are precision with a grudge. You don’t posture, you don’t escalate, and you don’t warn anybody twice. That is exactly why the people who know you are so careful never to be the reason you start.
You understand the thing the whole franchise is secretly about: the cars are spectacular, but the crew is the point. You collect people, you keep them, and you’d drive through a building for any one of them.
You over-prepare and then take the dangerous part yourself anyway. It looks like control, but it’s really responsibility. You have never worked out how to ask somebody else to carry the risk.
You are not the most trained person in the building, the best equipped, or the one anybody would have picked. You are simply the one still standing at the end, which turns out to be the only qualification that matters.
Widows was widely loved by critics, enough so to earn a strong 91% on the aggregate site Rotten Tomatoes. The film** fell somewhat flat with audiences**, though, registering a mediocre 62% score from over 5,000 reviews on the Popcornmeter. Consensus among audiences was that the movie moved slower than traditional heist thrillers, which made it tough for some fans to stay engaged. The official synopsis for the film reads as follows:
“A police shootout leaves four thieves dead during an explosive armed robbery attempt in Chicago. Their widows, Veronica, Linda, Alice and Belle, have nothing in common except a debt left behind by their spouses’ criminal activities. Hoping to forge a future on their own terms, Veronica joins forces with the other three women to pull off a heist that her husband was planning.”
Check out Widows streaming for free on Pluto TV and stay tuned to Collider for more updates and coverage of Jon Bernthal’s future projects.
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Gillian Flynn, Steve McQueen