Thunderbolts are go!
At Marvel’s Hall H panel San Diego Comic-Con 2024, Marvel boss Kevin Feige took the stage to share more about the upcoming anti-hero squad, alongside the star-studded cast.
Returning to the MCU in the upcoming film are Florence Pugh as Yelena Belova, Julia Louis-Dreyfus as Contessa Valentina Allegra de Fontaine, David Harbour as Alexei Shostakov/Red Guardian, Wyatt Russell as John Walker/U.S. Agent, Hannah John-Kamen as Ava Starr/Ghost and Olga Kurylenko as Antonia Dreykov/Taskmaster.
The film, directed by Jake Schreier, will also see Sebastian Stan reprising his longtime role as Bucky Barnes, aka the Winter Soldier, after he and Anthony Mackie most recently starred in their own Disney+ spinoff, The Falcon and the Winter Soldier.
Viewers inside Hall H got a first look at footage from the film, not yet released to the public. According to fan accounts, it showed the team assembling (and Stan back with Bucky’s Winter Soldier-style long hair).
Feige first confirmed the Thunderbolts team-up at San Diego Comic-Con in July 2022, as he introduced Marvel’s Phase 5 slate of film and streaming projects. The Thunderbolts film will cap off Phase 5, with a planned release date on July 25, 2025.
Disney and Marvel later officially confirmed the first round of casting at the D23 Expo in September 2022, where Schreier spoke with ET about the film, avoiding all possible spoilers about the script or plot, offering instead a perfectly cryptic, Marvel-approved answer to what fans can expect from Thunderbolts.
“I think you’ll see an incredible group of people, who share a certain kind of past trauma, coming together,” the director shared, “learning to work together in a way and overcoming some nondescript obstacles we can’t speak to.”
Here’s more of what we know about the upcoming team-up:
Valentina is to the Thunderbolts as Nick Fury is to the Avengers, and fans have already seen Louis-Dreyfus’ character recruiting two members of the team in her scenes with Pugh and Russell in Black Widow and The Falcon and the Winter Soldier, respectively. (In some parts of the comic canon, Valentina and Fury are also an on-again, off-again romantic pairing — however in Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, it was revealed that this Valentina used to be married to Martin Freeman’s Everett Ross.)
So, what does it mean for the Emmy winner to continue carving out her place in the MCU? “It means that my children now really respect what I do for a living,” Louis-Dreyfus joked with ET at D23.
At San Diego Comic-Con 2024, the actress said of her character’s motivation, “Valentina is after power, control, and I would say just generally, she wants to kick ass in the Marvel Universe.”
Pugh wasn’t able to join her castmates at D23, but sent along a video message about how excited she was to play Yelena in the Thunderbolts team-up, after introducing the character in Black Widow and furthering her story in the Hawkeye Disney+ series.
In the Marvel comics canon, Yelena takes up the Black Widow mantle, and following the death of Scarlett Johansson’s Natasha Romanoff in Avengers: Endgame, there’s plenty of speculation that the official title could be in the future for Pugh’s character, who seems to have becoming something of an assassin-for-hire in the MCU so far.
In Marvel comics, Red Guardian has a colorful backstory with the Winter Guard, an Avengers-esque team of Russian supers. But Harbour told ET that he couldn’t be more excited to bring his bumbling-but-brutal aging super soldier — the comedic relief of Black Widow — back to the big screen with the Thunderbolts team.
“It’s a unique MCU movie in the sense that you’ve got a bunch of misfits and outcasts and losers and people that don’t really live up to the super in superhero,” he shared at D23 Expo. “I think audiences have some complicated feelings about a lot of us, and that’s a terrific thing going in.”
In another ET interview in February 2023, Harbour shared how excited he was to reunite with Pugh in the team-up film.
“I really like what they’ve pitched me so far, even though I haven’t seen the full script,” he shared. “I really love the relationship that I have with Florence’s character, and I really like the idea that [Alexei is] going to be with the anti-Captain America in Wyatt Russell.”
“I feel like there’s a lot of fun to be had,” Harbour added, calling the Thunderbolts team a group of “cool losers.” “I’m really excited about it. I was wondering if I would be brought back, or how I would be brought back. And this really is beyond my expectations of cool.”
For Stan, who’s now played Bucky Barnes for over a decade, “I was simply told that it’s time to go to work,” he joked with ET at the D23 Expo. “[Time to] get the arm back.”
While he knows by now to keep mum about any specific details, the actor noted that picking back up with his character following the events of The Falcon and the Winter Soldier, “It’ll be interesting to see, yeah, ’cause we left them off in a really specific place.”
So, what can viewers expect from the Thunderbolts team-up? “Chaos,” he teased. “It’s probably gonna be a lot of, I don’t know, turmoil and people crying.”
“I think it’s gonna be fun,” he added in a February 2023 interview with ET. “I’m really excited about it. [There’s] a lot of great people that I haven’t worked with before, and some returning as well.”
And of course, even in the absence of Anthony Mackie, the pair’s legendary banter continued. When asked if he might also make an appearance in the forthcoming Captain America: New World Order, where Mackie’s Sam Wilson officially takes up the cinematic mantle, Stan quipped, “I specifically requested that I would need some time from Anthony, because I need to sort of find my way back to me.”
Of returning to the character once again, Stan joked at San Diego Comic-Con 2024, “It’s like having nine lives… how many are left? No, it’s really been a privilege.”
Russell joked that any specific character details about Thunderbolts are “above my pay grade,” but demurred when asked if he’d like to see a redemption arc for his character, who got a recruiting visit from Valentina using his shield to publicly beat an adversary to death.
“Maybe,” he couched. “But then, you know, you like playing guys who have problems. It’s kind of more fun… Ideal is, keep the problems, solve a few, but then you still got skeletons in the closet to bring them back.”
Of his anti-hero status, Russell joked at San Diego Comic-Con 2024 that “everyone is gonna f***ing love me” in Thunderbolts.
John-Kamen told ET that she felt “relieved” to get the call to reprise her Ant-Man and the Wasp character, getting to dive deeper into the misunderstood antagonist, who was revealed at the end of that movie to be a molecularly unstable woman just trying to survive.
“I was like, ‘Great, I can come back and figure out more about Ava and Ghost,” the actress told ET. “Kind of [explore] how she’s going to work in a team… I was relieved to get to tell the story more.”
The Black Widow actress was also absent from the cast’s D23 appearance, but there’s plenty of comic canon to mine for theories about how her character could fit into the team-up. Taskmaster’s ability to mimic fighting styles has made the character a well-known adversary of Captain America, Ant-Man and Spider-Man in the comics, and has worked with everyone from Wilson Fisk to Kraven the Hunter, opening the door to plenty of possible future storylines.
Ford is joining the MCU in the role originated by the late William Hurt, who played the supporting military character from 2008 until his death in March 2022, appearing in The Incredible Hulk, Captain America: Civil War, Avengers: Infinity War, Avengers: Endgame and Black Widow.
The Indiana Jones star will first appear as Ross in the upcoming Captain America: Brave New World, and Anthony Mackie spoke with ET about working alongside the action movie legend after sharing an on-set pic of the two watching dailies together.
“It’s been a lot of fun,” Mackie shared. “I thought Harrison would be the old curmudgeon, angry dude, but he’s not at all. He makes fun of people, he allows people to make fun of him. Whenever he’s ready to roll, he’s like, ‘Let’s shoot this piece of sh*t!’ And everybody’s like, yay, Harrison’s ready to shoot!”
The Top Gun: Maverick star flies into the MCU in an unknown part originally set to be played by Steven Yeun. The Beef star had to drop out of the film due to scheduling conflicts.
During the movie’s panel at San Diego Comic-Con 2024, Pullman stated that his character was named “Bob,” hinting at fan theories that he’ll be playing the superhero Sentry, whose civilian name in the comics is Robert Reynolds.
Viswanathan was announced as Thunderbolts’ newest cast member in January 2024, taking over an as-yet-unknown role that was originally set to be played by The Bear star Ayo Edebiri. The Emmy winner had to drop out of the MCU team-up due to scheduling conflicts, leaving Viswanathan — best known for her roles in Blockers and Miracle Workers — set to take on the mysterious part.
Thunderbolts is set to hit theaters on July 25, 2025.
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