During Disney’s D23 Expo in Brazil, a brand new four minute sneak peek for Marvel Studios’ Thunderbolts* was released.
The new sneak peek shows off a lot of moments, including an extended look at Bucky pursuing the other members of the team inside of a limousine. It’s unclear why he’s fighting against the team, but Marvel seem to be pushing the idea of the Thunderbolts as more of a forced team than a found family like the Avengers.
They will fight together if they have to, but that doesn’t mean they like each other or want to be around each other for longer than they must. This is reinforced by multiple conversations through the trailer but most notably in a scene with Ghost, Yelena, and John Walker in which they mock him for being a very temporary Captain America: “I was actually the official Captain America” Walker states, to which Yelena responds “For like two seconds” which results in a tussle between the group.
Each character gets their moment to shine as the trailer cuts between them all, highlighting top moments for them. All of these small moments show them either doing mundane tasks at home or taking on some high stakes action. It quickly flashes through the members of the team but spends a lot of time with Yelena, proving undeniably that she is the leader and star of the movie – which of course they are getting their use out of Florence Pugh as she is getting a 8 figure paycheck for this movie.
Eagle eyed fans may notice that there is a lack of Taskmaster throughout the trailer and most of the shots of her are from shots that are suspected to be towards the first and into the second act of the movie. With the actress Olga Kurylenko being the least known name of the cast and all of the characters being pretty similar in power and personality, it makes sense that someone would have to bite the bullet in order to act as motivation for the rest of the team to continue and it makes even more sense for this to be Taskmaster.
Filming for Thunderbolts* was originally set to begin in May 2023, before being delayed by the Writers Guild strike and then again by the Actors Guild strike. It took months for any news and lots of gossip and different words amongst actors but it would be over half a year later, in February 2024, when principal photography would begin on the 26th in Atlanta.
It wasn’t until mid-June when filming ultimately commenced, giving the movie a strong 4 months shoot which is explainable by the various delays and schedules that they had to work around, as well as a seeming return to more practical effects and shooting on location. David Harbour was the last to finish shooting at the end of June, and it seems clear why when you look at how much Red Guardian seems to appear in the movie – the second most important character next to Yelana.
This makes Thunderbolts* a sort of Black Widow reunion, even acting as a psuedo-sequel after the troubled release of that film doomed it from ever being able to make a profit and likely scarring Marvel from wanting to make an actual Black Widow 2.
The original drafts for the script were said to include the team being sent on a mission in which they would all die, but that has since been reworked and into the movie that is now being released. It looks fun, exciting and engaging which is rare to be said about a Marvel movie these days.
Feature First has previously speculated that this could be leading to a name change and that the asterisk in the title could change at the end of the movie to an Avengers-related name, more specifically something along the lines of The New Avengers. With how much Marvel is pushing the movie, including a full trailer 9 months before release and a 4 minute sneak peak over 6 months before release, it seems that they have a lot of confidence in the movie and many plans for this team and its characters going forward.
Watch the sneak peek directly from us below:
Thunderbolts* is directed by Jake Schreier and stars Florence Pugh, Sebastian Stan, Geraldine Viswanathan, Olga Kurylenko, David Harbour, Wyatt Russell and Hannah John-Kamen. Kevin Feige is producing. Louis D’Esposito, Brian Chapek, Jason Tamez, and Scarlett Johansson serve as executive producers.
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