Florence Pugh Describes ‘Thunderbolts’ as a “Badass Indie” and “A24-Feeling”

After ‘Brave New World’ underwhelmed us all, Marvel is now betting all of its chips on “Thunderbolts,” set for summer release and coming to us amid multiple recastings and reshoots.

Here’s a kicker. Florence Pugh, who stars in “Thunderbolts,” is trying to convince us that the tone of the film is like a “badass indie, A24-feeling assassin movie with Marvel superheroes” (via Empire):

It ended up becoming this quite badass indie, A24-feeling assassin movie with Marvel superheroes […] There’s a certain amount of that Beef tone in it, that does feel different,” he notes. “There’s an emotional darkness that we brought to this that is resonant, but doesn’t come at the expense of comedy.

Trying to tap into that indie vibe. Watch it be nothing like an A24 movie. When you spend over $150M on a VFX-heavy movie then chances are that it’ll look like a VFX-heavy $150M movie. You can’t lie your way around that.

In the movie, Pugh reprises her role as Widow-trained assassin Yelena Belova, previously seen in “Black Widow” and “Hawkeye.” She’s an indie queen, and I’d much rather she concentrate her talents on strong non-IP projects, but while we’re at it, might as well compare your gigantic MCU movie to a scrappy indie.

“Thunderbolts” is a story led by a batch of anti-heroes and villains, backed by the U.S. government, assembled to execute dangerous missions. The film stars Pugh, Sebastian Stan, Hannah John-Kamen, Wyatt Russell, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, David Harbour, Olga Kurylenko, and Harrison Ford.

The cast didn’t initially look like that. Back in January, Ayo Edebiri (“The Bear”) announced her exit from the project. Her reason for dropping out was a “scheduling conflict.” Edebiri’s exit came just a few weeks after Steven Yeung (“Beef,” “Minari”) dropped out of the Marvel-produced “Thunderbolts”.

This all came as Andrew Droz Palermo, at the last minute, took over as cinematographer for “Thunderbolts” — originally hired DP Steve Yedlin had to exit due to — am I repeating myself? — a “scheduling conflict”.

Eric Pearson wrote the original draft of the script. In early 2023, Lee Sung Jin came in for rewrites. Earlier this year, Joanna Calo came in for more rewrites. It ends up being that Pearson, Lee and Calo will each share a writing credit for this one.

“Thunderbolts” hits theaters on May 2, 2025.