Steven Yeun Confirms 'Thunderbolts' Exit, Will Still Pursue MCU Role

It was definitely scheduling conflicts, but he promises to be back. He’s truly sorry it had to happen this way

Just a little over a day after it was reported that Steven Yeun had departed Marvel Studios’s Thunderbolts, the actor has confirmed it, and he wants to make very clear how much doing so pained him.

Yeun was celebrating the opening of the Louis Vuitton pop-up in West Hollywood Wednesday night, and cited the studios’ prolonged feet-dragging to pay their writers and actors. Thunderbolts had paused production in May in the wake of the writers having to go on strike, and after a couple of months the actors were officially striking as well. This led Disney to, amongst other seismic shifts to their release schedule, ultimately delay Thunderbolts in particular for a year, from what is now this July to next July. As he put it “I think for me, time passing and things shifting kind of pulled me out of it. But Jake [Schreier], I know, is going to do an incredible job.” While he couldn’t be part of things for this project, where he would’ve played Sentry, he’s staying close, saying “I wanna do a Marvel movie.”

Yeun’s casting was first reported in February, and while Marvel never confirmed it he did speak about it a few times before the strikes. It’s not like they did so for any of Deadpool 3’s returnees either, so that isn’t too much a hang up. How sorry was he that he had to exit? “It took a lot of drafts on email to make sure that I conveyed the sincerity of how sorry I was to have to back out,” he assured. When asked if he had any specific projects or characters he would be aiming for, he replied, “I think it’s too early to say that. I probably pissed off too many people leaving, so I’m just gonna say, ‘Thank you for having me.'” He’s keeping his ideas close to the chest.

Thunderbolts is actually now being written by Lee Sung Jin, the creator of Beef, the Netflix series that Yeun has an acting Emmy nomination for (which will be determined on January 15), which builds off of a first draft by Black Widow screenwriter Eric Pearson. When filming does begin this spring, Yeun misses out on working with Sebastian Stan as Bucky Barnes the Winter Soldier, David Harbour as Red Guardian Alexei Shostakov, Florence Pugh as Yelena Belova, Wyatt Russell as John Walker the US Agent, Hannah John-Kamen as Ava Starr aka Ghost, Olga Kurylenko as Antonia Dreykov the Taskmaster, Julia Louis-Dreyfus as Valentina Allegra de Fontaine, and Ayo Edebiri, whose role hasn’t been revealed yet in any capacity. Harrison Ford will continue playing (possible President) Thaddeus “Thunderbolt” Ross following his debut in the role in Captain America: Brave New World. Someone else will be on set to play Sentry instead, and the film is scheduled to be released on July 25, 2025.

Source: Variety