Marvel Has Been Setting Up Thunderbolts For 6 Years

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Despite being officially announced at San Diego Comic-Con 2022, Marvel has quietly been setting up its Thunderbolts movie for years. Interestingly, it was confirmed that the Thunderbolts movie will end the MCU Phase 5, with it set for release on July 26, 2024. Absolutely nothing else was revealed about the upcoming project, however, including plot details or cast. It was earlier confirmed that Black Widow scribe Eric Pearson is working on the script and Jake Schreier (Robot & Frank, Lodge 49) is set to direct.

In Marvel comics, the Thunderbolts are somewhat akin to DC's Suicide Squad. When the Avengers were all killed, a new team named the Thunderbolts stepped in to take their place. However, unknown to the world, the Thunderbolts were really Baron Zemo's Masters of Evil in disguise. Zemo's plan was to use their newfound public trust to gain access to top secret S.H.I.E.L.D. files and government agencies, then topple everything from within. But when his team discovered they actually liked being heroes, they turned on Zemo. Since then, there have been different iterations of Marvel's Thunderbolts, with the team usually tasked with doing the dirty, black-ops jobs the Avengers can't.

Related: Everything We Know About Marvel's Thunderbolts Movie

While the Thunderbolts news has seemingly come out of nowhere this summer, Marvel has been planting the seeds for the team in the MCU for a long time. In fact, the earliest rumors of a Thunderbolts project first started circulating a whopping seven years ago (via The Hashtag Show). Back then, the rumor was that Netflix was reportedly developing it as a TV show that would fit into the darker world of the Marvel Netflix universe. Even in the MCU, however, the Thunderbolts movie has