Marvel Studios’ Thunderbolts* was released in United States theaters this past May. Directed by Jack Schreier, who is now helming Marvel’s X-Men movie, Thunderbolts* stars Florence Pugh as Yelena Belova, Sebastian Stan as Bucky Barnes/Winter Soldier, Wyatt Russell as John Walker/U.S. Agent, Olga Kurylenko as Antonia Dreykov/Taskmaster, Lewis Pullman as Robert “Bob” Reynolds/Sentry, David Harbour as Alexei Shostakov/Red Guardian, HannahJohn-Kamen as Ava Starr/Ghost, and Julia Louis-Dreyfus as Valentina Allegra de Fontaine.
What Oscars is the MCU Thunderbolts* movie campaigning for?
On Disney’s For Your Consideration page, it’s been announced that Thunderbolts* is campaigning for the Best Picture. If it were to win, the award would go to Kevin Feige.
Thunderbolts* is also campaigning for Best Director (Schreier), Best Actress (Pugh), Best Supporting Actor (Stan and Pullman), Best Supporting Actress (Louis-Dreyfus), Best Casting (Sarah Halley Finn), Best Adapted Screenplay (Eric Pearson and Joanna Calo), Best Cinematography (Andrew Droz Palermo), Best Costume Design (Sanja Hays), Best Film Editing (Angela Catanzaro and Harry Yoon), Best Makeup & Hairstyling (Kimberly Jones and Lane Friedman), Best Original Score (Son Lux), Best Production Design (Grace Run and Gene Serdena), Best Sound (Samson Neslund, Daniel Laurie, Onnalee Blank, Michael Semanick, and Chris Giles), and Best Visual Effects (Jake Morrions, Chad Wiebe, Mat Krentz, and Nikos Kalaitzidis).
The Oscar nominations will be announced on Thursday, January 22, 2026, with the ceremony then being held on March 15, 2026.
At the same time, Marvel is trying to get Captain America: Brave New World some Oscars love, as that movie has been submitted for Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor, Best Supporting Actor, Best Supporting Actress, Best Film Editing, Best Makeup & Hairstyling, Best Original Score, Best Production Design, Best Sound, and Best Visual Effects.
Thunderbolts* is now streaming on Disney+.
Originally reported by Brandon Schreur at SuperHeroHype.
Sebastian Stan worked hard to keep Donald Trump out of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. The actor said this week he struggled to drop mannerisms he learned while playing the former president in The Apprentice when he arrived on set of the MCU’s Thunderbolts.
Stan plays Trump in Ali Abbasi’s The Apprentice, set for release Oct. 11. The Hollywood Reporter’s David Rooney called the performance “excellent,” saying the actor goes “beyond impersonation to capture the essence” of Trump.
In Thunderbolts, set for release in May 2025, Stan will reprise his role as Bucky Barnes, The Winter Soldier.
“I went off to Marvel after [The Apprentice],” Stan said in an interview with British GQ. “And we were doing scenes, and I would do something, a thing or two, and be like, ‘Fuck! This is still living somewhere.’”
Stan also shared his routine for gaining weight on The Apprentice: drinking Coca-Colas and eating lots of peanut butter and jam sandwiches. The result worked for getting into character as a young Donald Trump, but made the transformation back into superhero for Thunderbolts rather challenging. Plus, filming for both movies was affected by the writers and actors strikes, which meant Stan went periods of gaining and losing weight only for filming schedules to be postponed or changed.
“I’m fuckin’ 41,” Stan said of the back-and-forth. “I just worked pretty hard to get in shape here!”
Florence Pugh is all set to star in the upcoming Marvel Cinematic Universe film Thunderbolts. The actress has now shared a BTS video from the sets in Atlanta.
Florence Pugh took to her social media handle to share footage from the sets of Thunderbolts. In the video, the actress can be heard saying that she isn’t supposed to reveal anything about the film but proceeds to offer sneak peeks anyway.
Pugh who is reprising her role as Yelena in Thunderbolts after her stint in Hawkeye, shared a closer look at her suit. The film will feature a team-up of Marvel antiheroes.
Directed by Jake Schreier, the film also features Olga Kurylenko, Geraldine Viswanathan, Wyatt Russell and Hannah John-Kamen.
Since 2014’s Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Anthony Mackie has popped up as former pilot (and Steve’s ever reliable bestie) Sam Wilson. Last we saw Sam, he’d finally accepted his role as the new Captain America in TheFalcon & the Winter Soldier, which was all the way back in 2021.
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Next year, Sam will headline his first solo film in Captain America: Brave New World, which follows on from that miniseries. Talking to Radio Times, the actor acknowledged he was fond of working on that show, which paired him with Sebastian Stan’s ex-cyborg assassin Bucky Barnes. “I was actually excited to do a second season, just so me and Sebastian can get paid to hang out,” he stated. “Because it’s like me, him and Daniel Brühl [as Zemo]. It’s kind of like the perfect storm of happiness. […] Anything I can do to hang out with a dancing Daniel Brühl makes me very happy.”
Brave New World’s full cast hasn’t been officially revealed, but Mackie confirmed neither Bucky or Zemo will be popping up here. (Bucky will be featured in Thunderbolts while Zemo’s next appearance is a big question mark.) Since FalconSoldier is a fairly key part of Sam’s evolution, he’s admitted headlining a movie without those two doesn’t entirely feel the same. “When they decided to go back to the movies, it is what it is, but I don’t have my friends anymore. It kind of dampens it a little bit.”
Major supporting characters often pop in and out of the MCU a somewhat regular cadence—see Hawkeye and Jane Foster as two of many examples. There are some, though, who feel like they should be around more often than they are, and their absence often highlights how much a particular entry isn’t entirely working. There’ll be some familiar faces in Brave New World (like Danny Ramirez’s Joaquin Torres), but given how FalconSoldier ended with the promise of Sam and Bucky as a dynamic duo, it’s a bit of a shame we won’t get to see that play out on the big screen.
Captain America: Brave New World is expected to hit theaters on February 14, 2025.
After the first few Marvel Cinematic Universe films came out, it was clear they were building toward an Avengers crossover movie. 15 years after Iron Man‘s release, we are now entering Phase 5 of the MCU. And along the way, Marvel has been slowly putting together a team of anti-heroes in the background.
That’s right, we are getting the Marvel version of Suicide Squadwith the Thunderbolts—sometimes you need the bad guys to save the world. We have a deep love for many villainous characters here at TMS, so getting redemption stories for an entire team of them is going to be delicious. Let’s go over everything we know about Thunderbolts so far.
When does Thunderbolts come out?
At the D23 Expo in September 2022, Disney and Marvel announced the official Thunderbolts cast with a team lineup photo that had all of us foaming at the mouth for more. After some release date swaps and delays, the movie is currently slated to come out on May 2, 2025.
Thunderbolts is like the Avengers, but for morally grey anti-heroes and villains. Most of the characters in this movie were first seen in other MCU titles over the years, so we already know them and love them!
James Buchanan “Bucky” Barnes, a.k.a. Winter Soldier (Sebastian Stan) – Last seen in The Falcon and the Winter Soldier series on Disney+. Bucky grappled a lot with his past in this one and found a BFF in Sam Wilson, who is taking over the Captain America moniker in the upcoming movie Captain America: New World Order.
Yelena Belova, a.k.a. Black Widow (Florence Pugh) – Last seen in the Hawkeye series. Yelena is perfect and I love her and she doesn’t need to change a single thing. She went away during the Blip only to come back to a world that her sister, Natasha Romanoff (Scarlett Johansson), died trying to save. Yelena is just trying to find the right path after a lifetime of following bad orders.
Ava Starr, a.k.a. Ghost (Hannah John-Kamen) – Last seen in Ant-Man and the Wasp. A skilled fighter with the cards stacked against her, Ava is more of an anti-hero than a real villain. Hopefully, her condition has gotten more stable since her last appearance and she can have somewhat of a new beginning.
John Walker, U.S. Agent (Wyatt Russell) – Last seen in The Falcon and the Winter Soldier. U.S. Agent is the guy they tried to make into the new Captain America—and failed miserably. I think this character will have the longest path to redemption since he is just awful.
Valentina Allegra de Fontaine (Julia Louis-Dreyfus) – Last seen in Black Panther: Wakanda Forever. We watched Valentina slowly gather a team of discarded people, and now she’s the director of the CIA with an agenda to accomplish.
Alexei Shostakov, a.k.a. Red Guardian (David Harbour) – Last seen in Black Widow. Alexei is the Russian version of Captain America who served as a father to Natasha Romanoff and Yelena Belova. He’s not a bad guy; he just needs a little structure and guidance. It will be interesting to see him on a team with his daughter.
Antonia Dreykov, a.k.a. Taskmaster (Olga Kurylenko) – Last seen in Black Widow. This version of Taskmaster is a product of the Red Room, just like the Black Widows. Unlike them, however, Antonia wears a special suit and mimics superheroes’ fighting techniques to use against them. She’s been living her whole life as her father’s attack dog, so it will be an entirely new world for her.
General Thaddeus “Thunderbolt” Ross (Harrison Ford) – Last seen in Avengers: Endgame. Ross went from fighting the Hulk to instating the superhero accords that led the Avengers to a Civil War. He will appear in the next Captain America movie before returning in Thunderbolts. Harrison Ford will take over the role previously played by William Hurt, who passed away.
Ayo Edebiri and Steven Yeun were both originally slated to join the cast of Thunderbolts, with Yeun playing Sentry and Edebiri in an unannounced role. However, both have left the production due to scheduling issues, with Geraldine Viswanathan taking over Edebiri’s role, and Lewis Pullman reportedly in talks to play Sentry
What is the plot of Thunderbolts?
In the original comic book storyline, Baron Von Zemo created the Thunderbolts team out of villains he previously collaborated with. When all the heroes died during a certain story arc, he realized Earth still needed a team of super-powered beings to save the world. Later iterations of the Thunderbolts are started by various government factions that need the team to get their hands dirty in a way the Avengers or the Fantastic Four never would. It seems like the movie will go with this version of the team since de Fontaine is handling the group. I would wager their mission would have something to do with the U.S. government’s desire for a monopoly on Wakanda’s vibranium supply.
Who is writing and directing Thunderbolts?
Director Jake Schreier enlisted Lee Sung Jin to work on the script after working together on Netflix’s Beef (also starring Yeun). Lee Sung Jin will write alongside Kurt Busiek and Eric Pearson. Busiek created the Thunderbolts team for Marvel Comics, so it is great to see his involvement with the film. Pearson worked on several other MCU projects, including the screenplays for Black Widow and Thor: Ragnarok.
Who is the villain of Thunderbolts?
Since Thunderbolts features a team full of former villains, who could be the bad guy in this one? Marvel has not announced the official villain, but of course there’s plenty of speculation online. Could it be Doctor Doom? Or maybe General Ross himself, since he has been the villain before? There does seem to be a lot of chatter behind Hyperion as a new villain for the MCU. Hyperion is like an evil version of Superman, and could be just the person to bring a ragtag team of baddies together to save the planet they all call home.
Steven Yeun will not be suiting up for Thunderbolts, the antihero-centric feature in the works from Marvel Studios, sources tell The Hollywood Reporter.
Yeun’s involvement in Thunderbolts was first reported back in February, though Marvel never officially announced the casting. Five months earlier, during a D23 presentation, the studio revealed Florence Pugh, Sebastian Stan, David Harbour and Wyatt Russell were among the Marvel mainstays who would be in the film.
Like many tentpoles, Thunderbolts was struck by last year’s dual writers and actors strikes, which put schedules in disarray across Hollywood. Thunderbolts was initially slated for July 2024, but was pushed back a year to July 2025 and has yet to begin filming.
Jake Schreier is directing Thunderbolts, which is rumored to assemble a team of Marvel’s antiheroes and villains.
Yeun already leads a high-profile comic book property as the voice star of Invincible, Amazon’s adaptation of the Robert Kirkman comic.
He rose to prominence as one of the leads of The Walking Dead and is in the awards season race for his Netflix limited series Beef. He will compete for the Golden Globe for best male actor in a limited series on Sunday, and later this month, will be in contention at the Emmys for actor in a limited series. (As an executive producer of Beef, he also shares an Emmy nom in outstanding or limited series category.) Coming up this year, he has a role in Bong Joon Ho’s Mickey 17 and the Sundance feature Love Me, starring Kristen Stewart.
The WGA writers’ strike is still going, and at this point, it’s beginning to affect the start of many different Hollywood productions. At Marvel, it already caused a delay in the shooting of Blade, and now a similar pause has been placed on Thunderbolts.
The writers active in the strike are demanding better pay, better working conditions, and protections from being replaced or having their roles reduced by A.I. writing tools like ChatGPT, among others. As of this writing, their demands haven’t been met and the strike shows no sign of slowing down.
Thunderbolts is set to star Sebastian Stan as Winter Soldier, Hannah John-Kamen as Ghost, Wyatt Russell as U.S. Agent, Julia Louis-Dreyfus as Valentina Allegra de Fontaine, Florence Pugh as Black Widow, David Harbour as Red Guardian, and Olga Kurylenko as Taskmaster. It follows a team of reformed villains who team up to work for the government. The film has been in the works since at least 2022. Eric Pearson was originally brought in to write the initial screenplay, but Lee Sung Jin joined the effort back in March of 2023. But thanks to the writers’ strike, no additional work can currently be done on the script.
This isn’t just a Marvel problem either. Of course, the strike spans the whole industry, including Marvel’s competitors at DC. In fact, during a commencement speech at a university in Boston, chants broke out as Warner Bros. Discovery head David Zaslav was speaking. A whole room of students joined in, shouting “Pay your writers!”
It’s unlikely this whole thing will get solved any time soon, but we’d love to be mistaken about that. Thunderbolts is currently scheduled to open in theaters on July 26, 2024.
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Marvel‘s Thunderboltsis nearing the end of pre-production, and with that, come some rewrites. Eric Pearson, the man who penned the Black Widow film, finished the initial draft, but Lee Sung Jin is now on-board to punch the whole thing up a little.
The movie is set to star a huge ensemble cast of Marvel anti-heroes. While the movie bears some resemblance to the premise of Suicide Squad, it has its own identity because a lot of the “villains” involved are mostly reformed. It’s not like a team full of entirely awful people are all joined up because they’re forced to. Instead, the villains are attempting to make a name for themselves as heroes.
Lee Sung Jin spoke with Variety, where he shared his involvement.
I’m rewriting it. It’s the whole squad again. [Director] Jake [Schreier] asked me if I would come on board. I probably should have taken a break, but there’s a lot of themes and exciting things about the movie that I couldn’t help but sign on. It’s truly an honor to be part of a Marvel thing, but it is very different. One, it’s not my project, it’s Jake’s. It’s such a large scope and scale that the type of writing is very different. At the same time, the process feels the same, I’m still talking to Jake every day … I think once you find the squad of people you love and trust and are so talented, you do everything you can to keep working with them.
Lee Sung Jin also worked with Steven Yeun and Jake Schreier on the upcoming Netflix series Beef. The trio will be reunited on the set of Thunderbolts. The film is currently scheduled for release on July 26, 2024.
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Steven Yeun is stepping into the MCU, joining the cast of the upcoming Thunderboltsfilm. There’s no word yet about who exactly he’ll play, although we do know a pretty extensive amount of the actors we can expect to see. The main characters are as follows: Florence Pugh (Yelena Belova/Black Widow), Sebastian Stan (Bucky Barnes/Winter Soldier), David Harbour (Red Guardian), Wyatt Russell (U.S. Agent), Hannah John-Kamen (Ghost), Olga Kurylenko (Taskmaster) and Julia Louis-Dreyfus (Valentina Allegra de Fontaine).
Yeun is perhaps most well-known for his years-long stint on AMC’s The Walking Dead. Unfortunately, a big turning point for the viewership of the show was his character Glenn’s tragic death at the hands of Negan. He also went on to star in a number of acclaimed films like Burning and Minari. At the moment, he’s probably most recognizable as the voice of Mark Grayson from Invincible. He was also recently seen in Jordan Peele’s Nope.
The director set to helm Thunderbolts, Jake Schreier, has worked on a few films, such as Robot & Frank, as well as Paper Towns. Most of his career has actually been in directing music videos for some pretty high-profile artists, as well as a number of commercials.
We don’t really know much at all about the actual plot of the upcoming film, but we do know a good bit about the characters, and the nature of the team they’re on. The Thunderboltsare a team made up of reformed (or mostly reformed) supervillains, trying to atone for their past sins. Perhaps Kevin Feige put it best when he said: “It tells you a lot about the team when beloved Winter Soldier is the most stable among them.”
Thunderbolts is set to start filming in June of 2023, with a release date of July 26, 2024.
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David Harbour is branching out from his Stranger Things fame to develop his MCU character, Red Guardian. After previously appearing in Black Widow, Harbour now says the upcoming Thunderbolts will bring something new. Thunderbolts, the final film of Phase 5, sees Red Guardian thrown into a whole new scenario. In the movie, he’ll be joining a Suicide Squad-like team of anti-heroes.
In addition to Harbour’s Red Guardian, there are plenty of other “heroes” on the Thunderbolts team. Based on concept art, the group also features Wyatt Russell as John Walker, Sebastian Stan as Bucky Barnes, Julia Louis-Dreyfus as Valentina, and the list goes on. Additionally, Florence Pugh as Yelena Belova, Hannah John-Kamen as Ghost, and Olga Kurylenko as Taskmaster, will also appear in the film.
Colliderrecently spoke with David Harbour, and while the conversation wasn’t centered around Thunderbolts, things understandably drifted in that direction. He shared the following thoughts on the film:
It’s really cool. We introduce a thing that’s super cool. It’s vital. I’m psyched that Julia Louis Dreyfus’ character is going to be, in a bigger way, explored … I just love this mercenary element in the MCU. MCU has always been sort of elevated in a certain way. Captain America, even Iron Man, although he has egos, are always in it for the right reasons or ultimately does the right thing. And I like these guys who are a bunch of losers or a bunch of guys who can’t quite get it right. And so far what they’ve pitched me just feels really cool
As of now, Thunderbolts is slated for release on July 26th of 2022.
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