Movies get rewritten all the time – often while production is ongoing – but Marvel Cinematic Universe fans have been left so jaded by the Multiverse Saga already that Thunderbolts drafting in a new scribe to overhaul the initial screenplay a matter of weeks before cameras start rolling has set even more alarm bells ringing.
When the project was first announced, Black Widow‘s Eric Pearson was named as the sole writer behind the script, but we’re now getting a full-blown reunion from upcoming Netflix and A24 collaboration Beef after Lee Sung Jin was brought in at the last minute to re-team with director Jake Schreier and recently-cast star Steven Yeun.
As far as we’ve been led to believe – with the information coming from such trusted and reliable sources as cast members including David Harbour and Florence Pugh – Thunderbolts is poised to get underway in June, with a release date locked in for the following July. That’s not a massive amount of time to rejig a blockbuster comic book adaptation, leaving skeptics with plenty to say.
Of course, there’s every chance that it’s more of a polish than a page-one overhaul, but the fact the news has been left so late in the day to be made public was always going to prick up more than a few doubting ears. The vast majority of Marvel’s projects since Avengers: Endgame have been blighted by at least some sort of criticism with very few exceptions, and with the franchise coming under more scrutiny than ever before, we can only hope that the latest draft of Thunderbolts is the best possible version of the film.