With the Avengers spinning their collective wheels until RDJ slaps on Doctor Doom’s iconic mask sometime down the track, it’s time for a new team to step to the fore! A team of misfits, antiheroes, and ne’er-do-wells. A squad, if you will, ready to take on the most suicidal missions.
When is Thunderbolts* being released in the UK?
Thunderbolts* hits UK cinemas on May 2, 2025, and we’ll be thoroughly sick of that bloody asterisk well before then.
Thunderbolts*
What is Thunderbolts* about?
All we know is that Julian Louis-Dreyfus’ Contessa Allegra de Fontaine assembles a team of rough-around-the-edges semi-villains and outcasts to run off-the-books missions. Based on the comic created by Kurt Busiek and Mark Bagley, this concept draws on a later incarnation of the team. Originally, the Thunderbolts were led by Baron Zemo, who saw an opportunity when the Avengers all died (temporarily, because comics), forming a team of supervillains who pretended to be heroes as a cover identity while they secretly went about their evil-doing.
Since then, the team have been reimagined a ridiculous number of times, including several stints as government black ops commandoes. The upcoming film, directed by Jake Schreier from a script by Eric Pearson, Lee Sung Jin, and Joanna Calo, seems to be an amalgamation of the latter. And that weird asterisk is apparently important in ways that are yet to be revealed.
The cast of Thunderbolts*
Pulling together characters from various MCU outings, we have Florence Pugh as Yelena Belova and David Harbour as Red Guardian, both from Black Widow, with Rachel Weisz’s Melina Vostokoff also returning; Hannah John-Kamen Ghost, the villain from Ant-Man and the Wasp, plus Laurence Fishburne as her mentor, Bill Foster; Sebastian Stan as everyone’s favourite one-armed brainwashed assassin, Bucky Barnes; Julia Louis-Dreyfus as Valentina Allegra de Fontaine; Wyatt Russell as nobody’s favourite super-soldier, John Walker; Olga Kurylenko as Antonia Dreykov, aka Taskmaster; Lewis Pullman as Bob, who is apparently Sentry, a character far too complicated to go into here; and Geraldine Viswanathan as Mel, de Fontaine’s assistant.
Thunderbolts* trailer
Why we’re excited about Thunderbolts*
Look, it could go either way. That’s a pretty great cast, but we don’t really have enough info to judge by. Let’s see what the next trailer brings.
