Actress Florence Pugh, who plays Yelena Belova in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, recently shared that the announced Thunderbolts film might not happen.
Florence Pugh as Yelena Belova in Marvel Studios’ HAWKEYE. Photo by Chuck Zlotnick. ©Marvel Studios 2021. All Rights Reserved.
Speaking with Entertainment Tonight to promote Dune: Part Two alongside her co-star Zendaya, Pugh was asked what the status of the Thunderbolts film was.
She answered, “It kind of feels like it still might not happen because of the amount of times it’s been paused, which is just a natural feeling. But I’m going straight after this. I’m going to go to Atlanta and start doing some prep and then I’m off, I’m shooting.”
Pugh continued, “I’ll be there for a large portion of time. And it’s wonderful. When we shot Black Widow, we thought we were going to shoot the next movie relatively sooner than we did and it’s just been this thing that’s been looming in the future and now it’s actually happening so it feels a little bit surreal.”
She then confirmed, “It’s coming back. Yelena’s coming back.”
Hailee Steinfeld as Kate Bishop and Florence Pugh as Yelena Belova in Marvel Studios’ HAWKEYE. Photo by Chuck Zlotnick. ©Marvel Studios 2021. All Rights Reserved.
There have been a number of last minute changes to the film when it comes to its cast. It was reported that Ayo Edebiri exited the film and was replaced by Geraldine Viswanathan in an unknown role.
Before Edebiri exited Steven Yuen, who was to play Sentry in the film, also left the project. He was replaced by Lewis Pullman.
Actor Daniel Brühl, who plays Baron Zemo in the Marvel Cinematic Universe also indicated he won’t be reprising his role in the film.
Zemo (Daniel Brühl) in Marvel Studios’ THE FALCON AND THE WINTER SOLDIER exclusively on Disney+. Photo by Chuck Zlotnick. ©Marvel Studios 2021. All Rights Reserved.
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Walt Disney Company CEO Bob Iger should take his own advice and scrap the film. Iger shared the advice during the company’s Q1 FY 24 Earnings Results Webcast saying, “When you address these issues in movies, you do three things. You get aggressive at making sure the films you’re making can be even better, sometimes you kill projects you don’t believe in, and, of course, you put new things in the pipeline that you do believe in that you have much more confidence in. And we’re doing all of that.”
Given you are having multiple actors drop out of the project at the last minute and you don’t even have the main character for the Thunderbolts team in the film, it would be best to scrap it.
Thunderbolts logo
For those unfamiliar with the Thunderbolts, in the original Marvel Comics they were the Masters of Evil disguise. They went by the hero names of Citizen V, Mach-1, Songbird, Techno, Atlas, and Meteorite, but were actually Baron Zemo, Fixer, Beetle, Screaming Mimi, Goliath, and Moonstone.
The team took up hero responsibilities when it was revealed the Avengers and Fantastic Four had perished. However, when it was discovered they were not actually dead, Zemo outed the team in order to keep them all under his thumb after a number of them had begun seeing themselves as heroes.
His strategy blew up in his face as most of the team turned on him. However, he deployed a mind control device that pitted the Thunderbolts against the Avengers and Fantastic Four.
Baron Zemo reveals the Thunderbolts are the Masters of Evil in disguise in Thunderbolts #1 (1997), Marvel Comics
The upcoming film does not appear to feature villains posing as heroes at all except for Taskmaster and Ghost. The movie includes Florence Pugh as Yelena Belova, Sebastian Stan as Bucky Barnes, David Harbour as Red Guardian, Hannah John-Kamen as Ghost, Wyatt Russell as John Walker, Olga Kurylenko as Taskmaster, and Julia Louis-Dreyfus as Contessa Valentina Allegra de Fontaine.
Not only does the film not feature the Thunderbolts, but the film’s director Jake Schreier made it clear the movie is not what fans are expecting.
He told Collider, “It’s not a sequel. Yes, these characters have appeared before, but it is a new story being told and a story I think with a very different perspective than people are expecting. And that felt exciting and felt like a real challenge worth taking on.”
What do you make of Pugh’s comments? What do you think Marvel should do with Thunderbolts?
