In a new conversation with Empire, Thunderbolts* director Jake Schreier addressed fans’ ‘false’ movie expectations.
“I’ve seen a lot of synopses out there that just say, as though it’s a fact, that it’s a team assembled by Valentina to go do bad things,” the filmmaker said. “I understand why that would be the assumption, but that is not the story.”
Schreier also confirmed that Yelena Belova (Florence Pugh) will be the main focus, explaining, “She’s front and center. Yelena is in a certain place at the beginning of the film, and how she finds her way out of that place, and who she finds herself out of that place with, is at the heart of the story.”
He added, “It’s exciting to think of movies like ‘Ronin’ or ‘Reservoir Dogs,’ where you have a group of people that has no reason to trust each other. Could they even learn to work together? What sort of conflicts would arise?”
Marvel Studios presents ‘Thunderbolts*’ a team-up featuring Yelena Belova (Florence Pugh) and other MCU characters like Bucky Barnes (Sebastian Stan), Red Guardian (David Harbour), and John Walker (Wyatt Russell). The movie also includes Taskmaster (Olga Kurylenko), Ghost (Hannah John-Kamen), and Valentina Allegra de Fontaine (Julia Louis-Dreyfus), along with some new faces.
The cast joined San Diego Comic-Con in July to talk about filming and share a preview. The preview showed a fight between Wyatt Russell’s U.S. Agent and Pugh’s Yelena Belova. Pugh said she did her own stunts during a chat with Deadline.
The actress explained, “I think, whenever you sign on to a production that’s as big as Marvel, which is all about fitness and being someone that is put in situations that normal people aren’t in, it’s within you to want to push yourself and want to be able to do at least some of it.”
‘Thunderbolts*’ will arrive in U.S. theaters on May 2, 2025.
