Kevin Feige wasn’t here at CinemaCon, he’s busy on set at Avengers: Doomsday. But filling in the void from last year’s F-bomb onstage comedic high jinks with Deadpool & Wolverine were the cast members of Thunderbolts*, who entered Caesars Palace Colosseum having saved Wyatt Russell aka John Walker from losing his shirt at the tables.
Watch a new “Making Of” featurette about Thunderbolts* above.
Julia Louis-Dreyfus (Valentina) herded in like cats David Harbour (Alexei), Florence Pugh (Yelena), Russell and Hannah John-Kamen (Ava Starr).
(L-R) David Harbour, Hannah John-Kamen, Wyatt Russell, Florence Pugh and Julia Louis-Dreyfus onstage
Gilbert Flores
Pugh exclaimed to the crowd of exhibs, “We lost Wyatt in the casino.”
“I just lost 37 grand,” said Russell holding an alcohol slushie.
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JLD said, “We hope everyone can go see this movie so Wyatt can make back all the money he lost today.”
Pugh shared that the “new team of glorious misfits” had “such a special time making the movie. … I got to jump off the second-tallest building in the world — that was pretty f*cking cool.”
Thunderbolts* follows the MCU’s antiheroes as overseen by Dreyfus’ Valentina. It’s essentially Marvel’s Suicide Squad. In the footage shown, Bucky Barnes (Sebastian Stan) and Alexei drive a truck into a lobby with a SWAT team. Yelena, Ava and Walker jump in, and everyone takes out the troops with their acerbic fighting skills. Valentina gets to the loudspeaker in the lobby and tells the troupe that she left the door open — no need to make a mess. Up in her office, she dings all of their backgrounds, i.e. Bucky had a short congressional term, we learn.
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In addition, new Fantastic Four: First Steps footage showed off Julia Garner’s female Silver Surfer as the astronaut family’s main antagonist. The foursome of Vanessa Kirby, Pedro Pascal, Joseph Quinn and Ebon Moss-Bachrach weren’t here; instead, Feige beamed in to introduce the clip.
Disney truly has stepped up at CinemaCon, and that was apparent last year when the studio arrived with major stars including Ryan Reynolds, Hugh Jackman and Dwayne Johnson and put on a full Hawaiian show to spotlight Moana 2. In years prior, the king of the world’s box office used to deliver a button-down presentation of trailers, not over-shining like rivals Warner Bros and Universal. But Disney, realizing the funk that theatrical was in post-Covid and post-strikes, stepped it up immensely last year and kept the rah-rah for motion pictures going this year.
