UPDATE: Overnight, Yeun has confirmed the news to Variety. Speaking at the opening of the Louis Vuitton pop-up in West Hollywood Yeun explained “I think for me, time passing and things shifting kind of pulled me out of it. But Jake [Schreier], I know, is going to do an incredible job.”
“I wanna do a Marvel movie,” he added.
ORIGINAL STORY BELOW…
Though his place in the cast was never fully confirmed, overnight it appears that former The Walking Dead actor Steven Yeun is no longer attached to Marvel Studios‘ Thunderbolts.
Late yesterday rumours began to circulate that Yeun, who was set to take on the role of Sentry, was dropping out of the project. The news was then reported by THR, making it the first of the Hollywood trades to confirm the news. Though the news hasn’t been made official by Yeun or Marvel, THR reports that scheduling conflicts have forced the Invincible star to move on.
Thunderbolts had originally be due to begin production in 2023. But following the length WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes, which ended in November, the film was forced to push its production start in to this year.
Though Marvel nor Yeun ever spoke out about the casting, Yeun’s close friend and Walking Dead creator Robert Kirkman spoke frankly about the casting in a video posted to YouTube. “My good friend Steven Yeun is playing the Sentry in a movie … He called me, he went in for a costume fitting,” Kirkman said. “I don’t think this is a spoiler or anything that’ll get anybody in trouble … I don’t know, maybe, we’ll see. I don’t care, I don’t work for Marvel, what are they going to do to me? He said, ‘I just came back from a costume fitting for the Sentry. I guess I only do superheroes that are yellow and blue.’ He said he was at the costume fitting and was like, ‘Oh crap, I forgot Invincible is yellow and blue.’”
Thunderbolts is set to star Sebastian Stan as Bucky Barnes/Winter Soldier, Hannah John-Kamen as Ava Starr/Ghost, Wyatt Russell as John Walker/U.S. Agent, Julia Louis-Dreyfus as Valentina Allegra de Fontaine, Florence Pugh as Yelena Belova/Black Widow, David Harbour as Alexei Shostakov/Red Guardian, and Olga Kurylenko as Antonia Dreykov/Taskmaster.
The film is set to be directed by Jake Schreier based on a script written by Eric Pearson and subsequently re-written by Lee Sung Jin. It currently holds a July 25, 2025 release date.
