Thunderbolts: the Marvel film changes its name, and reveals a strange new title

But what is Marvel Studios preparing for us? This is the question we can ask ourselves after the announcement of the change of title of his next production Thunderboltscurrently filming.

Last week, during CinemaCon in Las Vegas, Kevin Feige announced that the film is now called Thunderbolts * (with an asterisk at the end)… while refusing to say much more.

An asterisk and a lot of mysteries

During his appearance at the World Exhibitors Congress which was held from April 8 to 11, the producer and great architect of the MCU since 2008 obviously reacted to the general circumspection regarding this change of name.

“Yes, you will notice the asterisk on Thunderbolts”he declared. “This is the official title of Thunderbolts and we won’t talk about it until after the film comes out.”

Internet users had already had a glimpse of this new title with the video of the filming posted by Florence Pugh a few weeks ago, without however thinking that it was indeed the new title.

This asterisk, a typographic sign which indicates a reference to a note or another word, is the last piece of the intriguing puzzle that constitutes the film, about which we currently do not know much beyond its casting and its laconic synopsis.

Directed by Jake Schreier (Relentless) and written by the Joanna Calo trio (The Bear), Lee Sung Jin (Relentless) and Eric Pearson (Black Widow), Thunderbolts * will thus tell the adventures of a group of MCU antiheroes.

This is made up of Yelena Belova (Florence Pugh), Bucky Barnes (Sebastian Stan), US Agent (Wyatt Russell), Red Guardian (David Harbour), Ghost (Hannah John-Kamen) and Taskmaster (Olga Kurylenko). And like DC’s Suicide Squad, the group is led by Valentina Allegra de Fontaine (Julia Louis-Dreyfus) seen in the series Falcon and the Winter Soldier and the movie Black Panther: Wakanda Forever.

It was enough for this new title to ignite the web: some Internet users see in this asterisk a tease of the Dark Avengers, a team of supervillains that appeared in the comics in 2009.

The real name of the team would thus be revealed at the end of the film, announcing by surprise the continuation of the MCU and the diptych Avengers 5 And Avengers: Secret Wars planned for 2026 and 2027. But all this remains a fan theory for the moment…

Will the Dark Avengers soon appear in the MCU? Response in cinemas when the film is released on April 30, 2025.

In the meantime, Marvel fans can rewatch almost all of the films in its cinematic universe by streaming on the Disney+ platform.