Thunderbolts: Wyatt Russell says the new team-up film won’t be a “straight-up Marvel movie”

Last Updated on December 1, 2023

While Chris Evans says he has not spoken with his old pals at Marvel Studios for a return to his Captain America character, Wyatt Russell is set to make his return as John Walker for the new non-Avengers team-up movie Thunderbolts. Thunderbolts is also bringing together the talents of Florence Pugh as her Yelena character from Black Widow, as well as David Harbour, Hannah John-Kamen, Sebastian Stan, Olga Kurylenko, Julia Louis-Dreyfus and Harrison Ford taking over for the late William Hurt as Thunderbolt Ross.

According to The Hollywood Reporter, Russell spoke with moderator Josh Horowitz at 92NY for a wide variety of topics including his new Apple TV+ series, Monarch: Legacy of Monsters. The son of Kurt Russell revealed that they have not started production on Thunderbolts yet, which got delayed several times due to the strikes. No matter what state Marvel is currently in, Russell says, “I have confidence it’s gonna be good. I know everybody is sort of on this Marvel train right now of things not going so well.”

Russell references the movie’s director, Jake Schreier, “I know Jake so well and I know how smart Jake is and how much he cares about making something interesting and different and utilizing everyone’s talents to the best of their ability. And the story that I think they’ve come up with is really interesting — I know parts of the story and how the story works, I can’t talk about it. But it’s not a straightforward Marvel movie as you’ve seen in the past.”

Wyatt continued, “I think that it’s gonna be a lot of fun but I think it will be something that hopefully Marvel fans will look at and go, ‘Oh OK, this is a little different, let’s go hard at it.’ And as far as how we are approaching it, it’s time to go to work a little bit, it’s time to make a good Marvel movie, so let’s do that and work hard at it and don’t take things for granted.” With upcoming comic book adaptations such as Kraven The Hunter and Madame Web on the horizon, the cast and crew of those films combat the superhero fatigue by claiming their movies have a fresher twist to them. Kraven‘s director, J.C. Chandor, says his movie is a tragedy while Sydney Sweeney says about Madame Web, “I think it’s different from what people expect a superhero movie to be. Quote that! That’s a quote, because the tabloids will pick up everything else we talk about.”