Thunderbolts Finds New Scribe In Beef Creator Lee Sung Jin
One of the more interesting projects on Marvel Studio's slate is "Thunderbolts," a movie that will bring together some of Marvel's shadier characters into the Marvel Cinematic Universe as a sort of Dark Avengers. Marvel has already released a concept art line-up that includes Julia Louis-Dreyfus as Fontaine, Florence Pugh as Yelena Belova, Sebastian Stan's Bucky Barnes, David Harbour's Red Guardian, Olga Kurylenko as Taskmaster, Hannah John-Kamen as Ghost, and Wyatt Russell back as Dollar General Captain America, aka John Walker, better known as US Agent.
We also know that Steven Yeun and "The Bear" actor Ayo Edebiri is in the cast, although these two will be new MCU characters with Yeun heavily rumored to be playing comic book fan-favorite character Sentry, an insanely powerful hero who has a very, very dark side. Like literally, there's a supervillain that lives within him and is an extension of his own powerful self.
As its June shoot date approaches, Variety is reporting that a new writer has joined the project, likely to make the final pass at it before the script is locked and shooting commences. That writer is none other than "Beef" creator Lee Sung Jin, which is fitting because Jin worked with both director Jake Schreier and Steven Yeun on "Beef."
It's fun being the bad guy
Jin is coming on after "Black Widow" scribe Eric Pearson completed his draft. With pre-production underway and the shoot start imminent, it's not shocking that Jin was quoted in Variety as stating this is only a rewrite, not a massive overhaul of the script.
"I'm rewriting it. It's the whole squad again. Jake asked me if I would come on board. I probably should have taken a break, but there's a lot of themes and exciting things about the movie that I couldn't help but sign on."
There's a ton of room for the MCU to let its hair down a bit by indulging these gray characters. This isn't quite Marvel's "The Suicide Squad," but I can imagine it'll cover a similar corner of comicdom where not everybody has to play by Boy Scout rules. All the characters mentioned for the MCU version aren't true blue, totally evil villains. Every one of them has done bad things but have either shown a sliver of conscience (like Ghost and Taskmaster) or are dang near heroes already (lookin' at you, Yelena).
Feels to me like Jin is being pulled in to tighten everything up and maybe inject some of his trademark dark humor into the mix. I'm very much looking forward to all these talented personalities being thrown into the same story together. It promises to be chaotic and a whole lot of fun.
"Thunderbolts" is on the fast track, with an estimated July 26, 2024 release date, a very quick turnaround for a superhero movie, by the way.