Florence Pugh Plays By Her Own Rules in Set Video From Marvel’s “Thunderbolts”
Florence Pugh was very much in character as the Black Widow Yelena Belova when she broke the rules (lightly, and with panache) to show us a bit of the set for Marvel Studios’ upcoming antihero team-up movie Thunderbolts.
Pugh is reprising the role that she first took on in the MCU’s standalone Black Widow, playing Scarlett Johansson’s estranged sister, and then later in Marvel’s Disney+ series Hawkeye. Pugh was in wardrobe as Yelena during the impromptu set tour, wearing a greenish-gray suit and looking ready to rumble. Thunderbolts is currently filming in Atlanta, and during Pugh’s video tour of the set, she introduces us to director Jake Schreier.
Thunderbolts is centered not on Yelena and a cast of MCU misfits and nerdowells, folks with a bit more moral flexibility than, say, Captain America. Along with Yelena, they include Winter Soldier (Sebastian Stan), Red Guardian (David Harbour), a former disgraced Captain America in John Walker (Wyatt Russell), Ghost (Hannah John-Kamen), Taskmaster (Olga Kurylenko), and the shady Valentina Allegra de Fontaine (Julia Louis-Dreyfus). Harrison Ford is also on hand as Thaddeus “Thunderbolt” Ross, a role he took over from the late William Hurt and will first see action as in Captain America: Brave New World.
The team is assembled by Louis-Dreyfus’s Valentina Allegra de Fontaine, whose reason for getting all these troublemakers together is yet unknown. Schreier told Collider he was excited to take on something new in the MCU.
“It was just a really different approach and a new kind of story to tell amidst that, which I know they’ve made so many things, but it’s not a sequel. Yes, these characters have appeared before, but it is a new story being told and a story, I think, with a very different perspective than maybe people aren’t expecting, and I think that that felt exciting and felt like a real challenge worth taking on.”
Thunderbolts is sort of like a Marvel version of the DC Studios film The Suicide Squad. In that film, some of the most offbeat and bizarre DC antiheroes teamed up at the behest of the United States government to save the world. In Marvel’s version, as Marvel Studios boss Kevin Feige joked at D23 in 2022 when the film was introduced, the team must be pretty rough around the edges when “beloved Winter Soldier is the most stable among them.”
Schreier directs from a script by Black Widow writer Eric Pearson.
Thunderbolts is due in theaters on May 2, 2025.
Check out Florence Pugh’s video tour here:
View this post on Instagram
For more on all things Marvel Studios, check out these stories:
“X-Men: 97” Trailer Reveals Marvel’s New Mutant-Powered Animated Disney+ Series
What Does “The Fantastic Four” Retro Illustration Suggest About Marvel’s Big Announcement?
Marvel Reveals “The Fantastic Four” Cast Including Pedro Pascal & Vanessa Kirby
First “Deadpool & Wolverine” Images Tease the Start of a Beautiful Relationship
Featured image: Yelena (Florence Pugh) in Marvel Studio’s “Black Widow,” in theaters and on Disney+ with Premiere Access. Photo by Kevin Baker. Courtesy Marvel Studios.
