Casting Julia Louis-Dreyfus as the evil Nick Fury for a bunch of superheroes sounds like the inciting incident from a Curb episode where Larry has to go to San Diego Comic-Con, but it’s a real movie. This, folks, is Thunderbolts*, with an asterisk that will inevitably reveal the movie’s actual title, which we’re guessing is Dark Avengers.
We’ve got FloPugh, David Harbour, Sebastian Stan, Wyatt Russell, Olga Kurenkyo, Hannah John-Kamen, and, of course, Louis-Dreyfus reprising all of their roles from various Marvel movies, as well as Louis Pullman, who will be playing the Sentry (read up, he’s probably gonna be the villain). It’s helmed by Beef director Jake Schreier and will be hitting screens next summer.
Joker‘s out next week, so we’re sure this new three-minute teaser trailer (is it really a tease at that point?) is going to play in front of that. But really, what are they? Some kind of… Suicide Squad?
Peep it:
So, here’s where we’d usually post a single synopsis, but we noticed something kind of funny while trying to find it. Here’s what we think is the official synopsis from Indiewire:
“‘Thunderbolts’ is about an irreverent team-up featuring depressed assassin Yelena Belova (Florence Pugh) alongside the MCU’s least anticipated band of misfits. The film also returns to the screen Marvel Cinematic Universe characters Bucky Barnes (Sebastian Stan), Red Guardian (David Harbour), John Walker (Wyatt Russell), Taskmaster (Olga Kurylenko), Ghost (Hannah John-Kamen), and Valentina Allegra de Fontaine (Julia Louis-Dreyfus), in addition to some exciting new faces.”
And here’s what a bunch of other sites went with after seemingly finding it on the Site Formerly Known as Twitter — the difference is pretty noticeable, but we’ve bolded it anyhow:
“Marvel Studios and a crew of indie veterans who sold out present “Thunderbolts*,”an irreverent team-up featuring depressed assassin Yelena Belova (Florence Pugh) alongside the MCU’s least anticipated band of misfits. The film also returns to the screen Marvel Cinematic Universe characters Bucky Barnes (Sebastian Stan), Red Guardian (David Harbour), John Walker (Wyatt Russell), Taskmaster (Olga Kurylenko), Ghost (Hannah John-Kamen) and Valentina Allegra de Fontaine (Julia Louis-Dreyfus), in addition to some exciting new faces.”
Who’s right? Who’s wrong? Could it be both — one in terms of literal accuracy and the other metaphorical? Only time will tell, but hopefully we’ll get our answers before May 2, 2025, when Thunderbolts hits theaters.