There is a change happening behind the scenes of Marvel's Thunderbolts. The rag-tag team of heroes and antiheroes is getting a new writer: Lee Sung Jin, who has new Netflix comedy drama Beef on the way, is taking over the script.
The film will see Julia Louis-Dreyfus' Contessa Valentina Allegra de la Fontaine bring together a team that includes Florence Pugh's Yelena Belova, Sebastian Stan's Bucky "The Winter Soldier" Barnes, David Harbour's Red Guardian, Olga Kurylenko's Taskmaster and Wyatt Russell as John Walker, AKA US Agent.
Black Widow writer Eric Pearson had been overseeing the previous drafts, but Lee is being brought in by director Jake Schreier (who also worked on Beef). And the show's connections continue as Steven Yeun, who co-stars in it, will have a role in the movie alongside The Bear's Ayo Edebiri (though their characters are unknown for now).
"I’m rewriting it," Lee told Variety in an interview. "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. It’s truly an honour to be part of a Marvel thing, but it is very different. One, it’s not my project, it’s Jake’s. It’s such a large scope and scale that the type of writing is very different. At the same time, the process feels the same, I’m still talking to Jake every day… I think once you find the squad of people you love and trust and are so talented, you do everything you can to keep working with them."
Thunderbolts is scheduled to kick off production in June ahead of a 26 July, 2024 release.