“Thunderbolts*” will feature a less well-known Marvel super-team. Unlike the “Avengers” and “Fantastic Four” franchises, which have enjoyed a steady level of popularity in the comic medium for over five decades, giving them a built-in audience for their film adaptations, “Thunderbolts*,” a more obscure Marvel property, will have to win the affection of its audience to some extent upon its theatrical release. While this is not totally unfamiliar territory for Kevin Feige and Marvel Studios, having introduced three movie installments of the relatively unpopular “Guardians of the Galaxy” comic series to massive critical acclaim and commercial success in the last decade, it is still a risk that Feige and Marvel are willing to take.
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One reason why the risk might be worth taking is the stellar cast attached to the project, which includes Florence Pugh, David Harbour, Sebastian Stan, Wyatt Russell, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Lewis Pullman, Olga Kurylenko, and Harrison Ford. Director Jake Scheir and co-writer Lee Sung Jin are coming off massive success after last year’s Emmys, in which they took home multiple prizes for the excellent Netflix series “Beef.” Eric Pearson, whose previous writing credits include “Black Widow,” “Godzilla vs. Kong,” and “Thor: Ragnarok,” is also attached as a writer.
Those who have been following the MCU closely over the past few years will recognize characters like Red Guardian (Harbour), Yelena Belova (Pugh), and Taskmaster (Kurylenko) from “Black Widow.” As well as Bucky Barnes (Stan) from several Marvel movies and U.S. Agent (Russell) from “The Falcon and the Winter Soldier.” Feige confirmed from the stage that Pullman will play the character Sentry, often known as Marvel’s version of Superman, i.e., an all-powerful character.
“Thunderbolts*” centers around a group of outcast heroes and supervillains assembled by U.S. espionage chief Valentina Allegra de Fontaine (Dreyfus) and under the command of General Thaddeus “Thunderbolt” Ross (Ford) as they take on potential adversaries like the mysterious Sentry (Pullman).
“Thunderbolts*” arrives in theaters on May 5, 2025. You can watch the new teaser below:
