[Warning: This article contains Thunderbolts* spoilers.] “B-Vengers”: assemble! One year after rebranding Thunderbolts* with an asterisk to mask the real title, Marvel Studios on Monday rolled out a title treatment, a Los Angeles billboard, and a series of rebranded posters (below) featuring the team’s new name: *The New Avengers. Although the title and new team name isn’t revealed until the very end of Thunderbolts*, the spoiler embargo has officially expired with the movie’s opening weekend — and Marvel is making a point to get the word out.
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First, Thunderbolts* stars Florence Pugh, Sebastian Stan, David Harbour, Wyatt Russell, Olga Kurylenko, Hannah John-Kamen, Lewis Pullman, Geraldine Viswanathan, and Julia Louis-Dreyfus assembled to join director Jake Schreier in unveiling a new poster replacing the Thunderbolts* title with *The New Avengers. Then Marvel Studios shared a video that showed Stan switching out a bus stop poster with the gold New Avengers logo, which is styled after the “A” logo used by Earth’s mightiest heroes since 2012’s The Avengers.
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Just like Valentina Allegra de Fontaine (Julia Louis-Dreyfus) rechristening the so-called “Thunderbolts” as the “New Avengers” at the last second, Marvel Studios is rolling out a series of former Thunderbolts* posters that have been updated with *The New Avengers. That includes posters on movie ticketing websites and an updated listing on the official Marvel website, which now has Thunderbolts* redirect to *The New Avengers.
You can see those posters in the gallery below, featuring New Avengers Yelena Belova/Black Widow (Pugh), Bucky Barnes/Winter Soldier (Stan), Alexei Shostakov/Red Guardian (Harbour), John Walker/U.S. Agent (Russell), and Ava Starr/Ghost (John-Kamen) alongside MCU newcomer Bob Reynolds/Sentry (Pullman).
“There was no plan for a Thunderbolts movie. I found I had this window to make a movie,” Eric Pearson, who receives a “story by” credit and shares a screenplay-writing credit with Joanna Calo, told ComicBook. “I had been doing Black Widow and had been able to be there, firsthand, to witness the rise of Florence Pugh and the great chemistry she had with David Harbour. I started talking with our producer, Brian Chapek, about future stuff. The Thunderbolts came up and I came up with a pitch to bring to Kevin Feige, which failed. I came up with a different pitch, which is essentially the version of this movie that exists now.”
As for baking in the idea that the Thunderbolts* were actually the new Avengers all along, Pearson added, “We probably debated ‘capital n’ versus ‘lower-case n’ in ‘New Avengers’ for hours. Every idea is talked about, but what we knew is we had a story that we liked, that we had a theme that was cohesive.”
*The New Avengers Theatrical Poster
*The New Avengers RealD 3D Poster
*The New Avengers Fandango Poster
*The New Avengers Dolby Poster
*The New Avengers IMAX Poster
T̶h̶u̶n̶d̶e̶r̶b̶o̶l̶t̶s̶* The New Avengers is now playing only in theaters.
