After skipping the convention last year, Marvel Studios' hotly anticipated return to Hall H at San Diego Comic-Con tonight (or this morning, for us on the British side of the pond) brought with it a bunch of cool MCU announcements. There was the mind-blowing reveal that Robert Downey Jr. is set to play Doctor Doom in Avengers: Doomsday and Avengers: Secret Wars, and that the rumours of the Russo Brothers' return for those movies were in fact true. We also got an official title reveal and Fantasticar sneak peek from Matt Shakman's upcoming Fantastic Four movie. And, nestled among the announcements on the night, we also finally got confirmation that Lessons In Chemistry star Lewis Pullman will star in Thunderbolts* (their as-yet-unexplained asterisk, not ours!).
Deadline reported back in January that Pullman was in early talks to replace Steven Yeun as Robbie Robertson — aka superhero with the power of a million exploding suns Sentry — in the film, directed by Jake Schreier (Beef). And whilst Pullman's Sentry role wasn't visually or verbally confirmed at Comic-Con, the actor did say he plays a character called Bob, and is Bob not just a shortened version of Robbie? Hmm... we shall see.
Pullman is joining an already stacked cast for Schreier's film which, to succinctly sum up, centres essentially around Marvel's equivalent of the Suicide Squad — the Thunderbolts. Amongst the Thunderbolts' villainous/anti-heroic ranks are Florence Pugh's Yelena Belova, Sebastian Stan's Bucky Barnes, Wyatt Russell's John Walker, David Harbour's Red Guardian, Hannah John-Kamen's Ghost, and Olga Kurylenko's Taskmaster. The motley crew will be joined in the film by Julia Louis-Dreyfus' Valentina Allegra de Fontaine and Harrison Ford's General Thaddeus 'Thunderbolt' Ross, as well as Geraldine Viswanathan, who has replaced Ayo Edebiri in an as-yet-undisclosed role. You can check out David Harbour all suited up as the Red Guardian at SDCC below:
Though little is known about Thunderbolts* and what its set-up will entail at this time, fans at Comic-Con were treated to some super early footage from the film that shows off the movie's much vaunted stuntwork. And of the movie's starry ensemble, Florence Pugh in particular came in for a lot of love from David Harbour, who said of his co-star, "She is just electric to work with. There’s warmth and humor, but there’s also a lot of pathos." Only time will tell how Pullman's possibly-probably-Sentry will factor into the Thunderbolts* equation, but if Pugh's bringing it on the warmth, humour, and pathos, you can rest assured we'll be going with the Flo when the villain team-up hits our screens as the last film of the MCU's Phase Five on 2 May, 2025.