Former “The Walking Dead” alum and Oscar nominee Steven Yeun will next go to work on Marvel’s “Thunderbolts,” a project that was to begin shooting mid-June but has been halted by the writer’s strike and will resume once that is over.
Speaking with THR as part of a roundtable discussion, Yeun discussed how he got onboard the project – which is mostly due to the film’s director Jake Schreier who recently worked with Yeun on the acclaimed Netflix series “Beef”.
Yeun says that Schreier saw him for the role and said: “This is actually a really interesting role, I’d be down to explore this.” Soon after, Schreier cast Yeun.
The project is expected to be the biggest-budget film of Yeun’s career so far and follows on from his work in “Nope” last year. Of the gig, Yeun sounds excited even as he’s aware some of his friends are suspicious or downright dislike the choice to be in a Marvel film:
“I think it’s less about now checking things off a bucket list and more looking at an experience. Sometimes I’ll have conversations with friends who are like, Do you know what you’re doing?’ And I’m like, ‘Yeah, we’re making a movie’. And they’re like, ‘Do you know what you’re doing?’ I try not to take that in because I think that’s the trap.
The trap is to look at that thing in the context of how society might view that thing. In the immediate, I’m just making a movie. Putting it out is a whole other thing that I’m going to have to prepare for afterwards.”
He’s not the only one of the film’s cast to face such scepticism from people they know. Actress Florence Pugh told Time Magazine last week that when she signed on to star in the MCU back with “Black Widow,” the response she got from some corners was hostility:
“So many people in the indie film world were really p—ed off at me. They were like, ‘Great, now she’s gone forever’. And I’m like, no, I’m working as hard as I used to work. I’ve always done back-to-back movies. It’s just people are watching them now. You just have to be a bit more organized with your schedule.”
Whom Yeun will play in “Thunderbolts” is not clear, though speculation has been that he might be in the role of Sentry/The Void. He joins a cast that includes Pugh, Sebastian Stan, Harrison Ford, Olga Kurylenko, David Harbour, Julia Louis-Dreyfus and more.
At the last report, “Thunderbolts” was aiming to hit cinemas on July 26th.
