Marvel’s “Thunderbolts” to Begin Shooting in June

Julia Louis-Dreyfus has some news for Marvel fans. The star of the upcoming film Thunderbolts has revealed that production on the movie will begin in June, according to Variety.

  • In a new Variety cover story, Louis-Dreyfus, who portrays Contessa Valentina Allegra de Fontaine (Val, for short) in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, revealed that Thunderbolts will begin filming in June.
  • Louis-Dreyfus’s Val made her first appearance in The Falcon and the Winter Soldier on Disney+, and has since appeared in Black Widow and the recently released Black Panther: Wakanda Forever.
  • To this point, Val has seemingly been assembling a team of rogues from a position of power but has stayed out of the action herself. Louis-Dreyfus is hoping to change that:
    • “I told them I really, really want to fight. We’ll see if that happens. I haven’t seen the script yet.”
  • Marvel Studios President Kevin Feige has described the plot of Thunderbolts as “the tale of a ‘rag-tag bunch’ of unincorporated superheroes, including Florence Pugh’s Yelena Bolova and Sebastian Stan’s Bucky Barnes.”
  • Joining Val, Yelena and Bucky in the film are Ghost, Red Guardian, U.S. Agent and Taskmaster.
  • We also learned that Harrison Ford will take up the roll of Thaddeus “Thunderbolt” Ross, previously played by the late William Hurt.
  • Val will be the leader of this “rag-tag” group, but we don’t know much more. Louis-Dreyfus mentioned her experience in dealing with the secrecy of a Marvel project:
    • “There’s so much secrecy around it. When I first started shooting it I had to go set wearing a black cloak with a hood and keep my head down so nobody could see it was me walking onto the soundstage.”
  • She also shared some details on a character choice for the MCU as opposed to the comic version:
    • “In the original comic she has sort of a white streak in her hair, but I thought purple would make it a little more of this world today. And I didn’t want her to look too much like Cruella, or anything like that.”
  • Marvel’s Thunderbolts is currently slated to open on July 26, 2024.