A new report claims that Marvel Studios is reworking the script for the impending Black Widow sequel.
Thunderbolts, scheduled for release in 2024, brings together several MCU antiheroes on one squad. Yet, a few of its leading actors have been in the same movie before.
Thunderbolts, which Marvel Studios Director of Visual Development Andy Park previously referred to as “a Black Widow sequel,” has already been revealed to star Florence Pugh as the Black Widow, David Harbour as the Black Hawk, and Antonia Dreykov as Olga Kurylenko/Taskmaster.
However, according to recent reports and rumors, this Phase 5 ensemble is undergoing retooling.
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The purpose of revising the Black Widow sequel at Marvel
In March, Lee Sung Jin was hired by Marvel Studios to “rewrite” the Thunderbolts in place of Eric Pearson, the Black Widow.
As the creator and showrunner of the Netflix series Beef, Jin is well-known.
Industry insider Jeff Sneider shared a rumor regarding why this Thunderbolts remake was required, claiming that “it had a similar problem to what Suicide Squad had” on The Hot Mic podcast with John Rocha.
“I’ve heard that they scrapped the draft of the other players. One of the issues with that “Thunderbolts” draft was that it shared a problem with the David Ayer version of “Suicide Squad” in that it was overly concentrated on the “Black Widow” characters who would be in “Thunderbolts,” and it wasn’t a [balancing] that was equal enough for the squad. It simply underlined the characters we already know very well.”
Together with the cast of Thunderbolts‘ Black Widow, the 2024 movie featured Wyatt Russell’s John Walker from The Falcon and the Winter Soldier, Bucky Barnes’ Sebastian Stan, Hannah John-Hannah Kamen from Ant-Man 2, and Julia Louis-Dreyfus’ Val.
In 2016, Warner Bros. launched the DC Universe movie Suicide Squad, which similarly included a group of antiheroes and antagonists.
However, despite an all-star ensemble and a successful marketing effort, the movie did not earn positive reviews, which prompted James Gunn to release The Suicide Squad in 2021 as a replacement.
Thunderbolts ought to be more significant than Black Widow 2
A warning sign was raised when Marvel hired Lee Sung Jin to revise the script. The action hinted that the filming of Thunderbolts, which is set to start soon, wasn’t to the studio’s liking.
Even though Sneider’s claims are just rumors, it’s not difficult to assume that the original script focused too much on Black Widow.
In addition to Florence Pugh and David Harbour being huge talents who almost stole every scene they were in in 2021, Andy Park also described it as a quasi-Black Widow sequel.
Reuniting them while also collaborating with Antonia Dreykov’s Taskmaster and another former Black Widow, Julia Louis-Val, Dreyfus’s might stand alone as a movie.
Thunderbolts must be more than just a Black Widow spin-off, though. And given that their comparable premise forces comparisons, Marvel Studios must definitely avoid what transpired in 2016’s Suicide Squad.
For the time being, it is impossible to predict if Lee will be able to balance the Thunderbolts cast and narrative. But once production starts, viewers should start hearing and seeing more, if all goes according to plan.
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