While it might already be abundantly clear who isn’t making it out alive of “Thunderbolts,” it’s been revealed that director Jake Schreier had one interesting MCU character that didn’t even make the cut. In an interview with SFX Magazine (via GamesRadar), the off-camera coordinator of Marvel’s latest band of misfits revealed that he’d originally considered throwing Man-Thing among the ranks of the new titular team, only for another project to beat him to it.
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“I think there was a point during pitching when I really wanted Man-Thing to be on the team,” the director confessed, only for things not to go as he’d hoped. The character, who first debuted in Marvel Comics’ “Savage Tales” #1 in 1971, comes to the aid of Jack Russell in Marvel’s sinister and incredibly Special Presentation, “Werewolf by Night,” which was released back in 2022. Gael Garcia Bernal played Russell, and after fighting off monster hunters, he is revealed to be an ally to Man-Thing in the TV movie’s closing moments, ending in a flurry of ferociousness. This, of course, led to him being missed from the call sheet for the upcoming film. “It all worked out for the best,” added Schreier.
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While that might be the case, it certainly feels like Man-Thing might’ve been at home alongside Yelena (Florence Pugh) and Red Guardian (David Harbour), given Schreier’s own personal endgame he has planned for the “Thunderbolts.” One that is that often ventured but always compelling grey area for its team members.
Director Jake Schrier wants to spend time in the grey plane with the Thunderbolts
When it came to picking the final “Thunderbolts,” the line-up was akin to another beloved team of Marvel underdogs, the “Guardians of the Galaxy”: Something good or something bad, or maybe a bit of both. For the Thunderbolts, the bad part was simply bad timing. “It was about looking through the MCU and not just finding bad guys who could be good, but characters that exist more on that morally grey plane or who were potentially destined for something else, but then something went awry,” Schrier explains.
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As revealed in the recently released final trailer for the film, it looks like Yelena and pals certainly seem to answer the calling that they never expected to get as they take on Bob, aka The Sentry (or is it The Void?), played by Lewis Pullman. Schrier teased, “Maybe there is something that is worth caring about. I think all of them have kind of lost touch with that idea. At first, through sheer necessity, because of the situation that they’re thrown into together, but then later more out of inspiration, as a group could they become something bigger than each of themselves could be on their own?”
That inspiration could very well continue into “Avengers: Doomsday,” given that they were all announced to be part of the next big MCU event movie, which is currently under production. For now, though, we can see the “Thunderbolts” first mission when the movie arrives in theaters on May 2, 2025.
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