‘Thunderbolts’ cast talk paving a new path in the MCU

Marvel knows how to pump out films with lots of star power, and that certainly is the case with its latest feature, ‘Thunderbolts.’

Starring Florence Pugh, David Harbour, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Geraldine Viswanathan, Lewis Pullman, Hannah John-Kamen, Wyatt Russell and Sebastian Stan, the film follows ” an unconventional team of antiheroes” who must (begrudgingly) help save the world while tackling their own personal obstacles.

The plot takes Marvel’s typical good vs. evil battle and adds a bit more nuance to its characters, it also stands out in the MCU for that exact same reason. But it’s all gearing up for the return of a hopeful renaissance on the movie biz, which producer Kevin Feige is all here for.

“Four movies made over 20 million this weekend at the box office. That’s excellent because it means there’s a variety. And they’re all very different films—that hasn’t happened in a while, and it’s very heartwarming to me,” Feige explains at a global press conference for the film. “What’s very exciting is audiences are getting to meet this team in this movie on Friday. We then have another team called The Fantastic Four that they’re gonna get to meet in July.”

Bucky Barnes (Sebastian Stan) in Marvel Studios’ THUNDERBOLTS*.Photo by Chuck Zlotnick. © 2025 MARVEL.

Marvel has big plans for its future (as we’ve seen through the brand’s multi-faceted “phases” of films) but ‘Thunderbolts’ specifically is set in phase 5, which is meant to set the stage for the upcoming ‘Avengers: Doomsday‘ and ‘Avengers: Secret Wars’ films.

“Avengers movies are always about incredible actors who have never met before on-screen meeting for the first time and interacting in ways that they’ve never interacted before,” Feige continues. “That’s my favorite part.”

‘Thunderbolts’ introduces some new characters into the mix, but we also get to revisit a few well-known ones—like Julia Louis-Dreyfus’ Valentina Allegra de Fontaine and Sebastian Stan’s Winter Soldier.

“In this particular film, you really get to know who [my character] is. This experience, albeit I loved everything before, but this was a lot to chew on and a lot to explore, ” Louis- Dreyfus explains. “I think that you get an opportunity to understand maybe why she is the way she is. It doesn’t necessarily excuse things, but it’s understanding. And frankly, it’s the way you approach a character under all circumstances—whether they’re a so-called good guy or bad guy, which is without judgment. That was a really exciting way to approach Valentina and her drive.”

Stan agrees with that sentiment. “I’ve always talked about [my character] like having a sibling I’ve never had. Honestly, I think we’ve both been learning from each other for 15 years in a way. There is a familiarity with him now that feels like I can just jump in there. But this was special for numerous reasons because it felt very real, the connection, and so on.”

“I think that’s what’s at the heart of this film, and I think that’s what people are gonna connect [to], perhaps in a different way—how real all of these characters are. They wear their hearts on their sleeve and they’re trying to do the right thing and they don’t know if they have the tools or not,” he adds. “My character’s always been riding that fine line and trying to figure it out himself without losing who he is or trying to regain himself again. And that’s sort of what we do in life.”

Florence Pugh on the set of Marvel Studios’ THUNDERBOLTS.Photo by Steve Swisher. © 2025 MARVEL.

Something else that stands out about this particular MCU film is the music, and director Jake Schreier recruited the experimental musical group Son Lux to come up with the ethereal soundtrack.

“They’re such intelligent guys, and they’re so connected to emotion. Often movies are made with a temp score where you shoot the movie, you go into the edit, you score it with other scores, and then you go in with your composer. It’s very hard to get away from that. What they were good enough to do here, is we started making the score for the movie before we ever went out and shot it,” explains Schreier.

“At the first table read, I played a full suite that they had made that are still the themes that ended up in the film. We were editing with our original score, and then they could iterate on top of that and build on that. So there’s an originality that comes with that that’s hard to replicate if you don’t start ahead of time. You also need composers that are willing to commit themselves so much to a story and be invested and want to work that hard and through the entire process. They did a wonderful job.”

‘Thunderbolts’ also stands out to the actors who are stepping into these roles. That coupled with the behind-the-scenes efforts is what creatives hopes puts this latest feature on its own map.

“I will say just the desire to have the input from us and the desire to have the input of our experience, of our talent…. that does not [happen] a lot of times on big movie sets,” says Harbour. “There is such a frothing at the mouth quality of [having] good actors tell good stories and to reach for the deeper parts of themselves and to want to play those things, that it truly is a boon.”

John Walker (Wyatt Russell), Ghost (Hannah John-Kamen), Yelena Belova (Florence Pugh) and Alexei Shostakov/Red Guardian (David Harbour) in Marvel Studios’ THUNDERBOLTS.Photo by Chuck Zlotnick. © 2025 MARVEL.

Catch ‘ Thunderbolts ‘ when it releases in theaters May 2