Giancarlo Esposito Has Joined 'Captain America: Brave New World' Through Reshoots

Of course he’s in a villainous role, but the 'Parish' star has said it’s a role nobody has fan cast him to be

It’s time for the Marvel Cinematic Universe to experience Fring cleaning. Giancarlo Esposito, long fancast as the Professor Charles Xavier for it, revealed he was cast in the storied film franchise, teasing to the CCXP Thunder Stage audience that it's coming "sooner rather than later," and "better than you can imagine." At Phoenix Fan Fusion, he told that crowd "The MCU has knocked on my door and it’s a role you won’t predict. It will be teased and there will be a series afterwards" and promised he would "knock it out of the park." Now we know exactly how soon that will be: Captain America: Brave New World, as it heads to reshoots.

Esposito, known for playing villains like Gus Fring and The Mandalorian’s Moff Gideon, will be playing a villain during the 22-day shoot that will at the very least add new action sequences, with other new elements sure to be uncovered later. While principal photography wrapping up last spring narrowly dodged the actors’ and writers’ strikes that took up most of the rest of the year, it’s post-production that got the brunt of it, experiencing delays that forced an ultimately nine month push back in release from releasing four weeks ago to Valentine’s Day 2025. However, this allowed executives time to focus on what they were looking for reshoots, taking in feedback from test screenings. Matthew Orton, who came from Moon Knight, was brought on in December for the rewrites sought, building on what The Falcon and the Winter Soldier creator Malcolm Spellman brought in the original script. Julius Onah still directs. Outside of CinemaCon it’s been very quiet regarding the film, especially because its part of the presentation was not released publicly.

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Reports of multiple previous reshoots on the movie have been debunked, as this has been the only one that will have ever happened. Thanks to not being intrinsically tied to any neighboring film, these reshoots will be nowhere near extensive as the six weeks Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness had undertaken, affected by being moved to the other side of Spider-Man: No Way Home. It won’t be as expensive nor extensive as The Marvels had either, and one insider says it will be overall cheaper than it as well.

The movie is a political action thriller that, tonally at least, is akin to Captain America: The Winter Soldier, where the newly-minted Captain America Sam Wilson debuted. Played by Anthony Mackie, he leads a cast that includes Harrison Ford taking over the role of now-POTUS Thaddeus “Thunderbolt” Ross (the CinemaCon footage confirmed the election), Liv Tyler returning as his daughter Betty Ross, Tim Blake Nelson as Samuel Sterns also returning from The Incredible Hulk, now fully transformed into The Leader. The Falcon and the Winter Soldier’s Danny Ramirez and Carl Lumbly return as next Falcon Joaquin Torres and supersoldier Isaiah Bradley. Shira Haas is appearing as Sabra, Seth Rollins is playing a member of the Serpent Society, alongside Rosa Salazar as Rachel Leighton aka Diamondback, and Xosha Roquemore has an undisclosed role.

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Sources: Collider, The Hollywood Reporter, Murphy’s Multiverse (1, 2)