The upcoming “Thunderbolts” movie marks a team-up of multiple supporting characters from across the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
Sebastian Stan’s Bucky Barnes has appeared in multiple films, Wyatt Russell’s U.S. Agent appeared in “The Falcon and the Winter Soldier” series, and Hannah John-Kamen’s Ghost appeared in “Ant-Man and the Wasp”.
More than any other Marvel Studios film though, the new movie seems to mostly tie back to “Black Widow” with the inclusion of three characters introduced there – David Harbour’s Red Guardian, Florence Pugh’s Yelena and Olga Kurylenko’s Taskmaster.
This has led to speculation that this is essentially a sequel to that film, a claim that director Jake Schreier assures ComicBook.com is not the case and is its own complete thing:
“Yeah, I wouldn’t look at this as a sequel at all, and we don’t talk about it that way, and we’ve never really kind of approached it that way in any of the conversations we’ve had with Kevin or Brian in working on it.
I think there’s a story to be told about a group of characters who can relate to each other in a certain way, or have gone through certain things, and we’re going to get into that.
And so much as… I mean, obviously, Florence has proved how captivating she could be in the MCU, and I think it’s great to have that as a reference point, but I think we’re all talking about making a movie.
You can come, and if you’ve seen that stuff, then great. If you haven’t, there’s still going to be a complete story that’s being told in a movie that works on its own, for sure, while remaining part of the overall storyline.”
Steven Yeun, Ayo Edebiri, Julia Louis-Dreyfus and Harrison Ford also star in the “Thunderbolts” film, which is expected to resume production once the strikes are over.
The comments come as Harbour recently confirmed on Happy Sad Confused podcast that Marvel reworked the entire third act of “Black Widow” whilst they were shooting.
