Sebastian Stan's next film with Marvel Studios, Thunderbolts, now has an official start date, and it's not far off.
Following his adventures with Sam Wilson in The Falcon and the Winter Soldier, Steve Rogers' best man is getting ready for his next step in the MCU.
One could reasonably assume Captain America: New World Order would be the character's next outing, seeing as he and Wilson shared lots of development with one another. Sadly, however, it seems that Bucky has very little, if anything at all, to do with Anthony Mackie's big movie.
Instead, the Winter Soldier will be teaming up with a band of questionable misfits, including Wyatt Russell's US Agent. While the exact details of what the team will be going up against are unknown, many believe it ties into the powerful, Superman-adjacent character, Sentry—a role that Marvel Studios potentially just cast.
When Does Marvel's Thunderbolts Start Filming?
A tweet from The Cosmic Circus' Lizzie Hill revealed when Thunderbolts, Sebastian Stan's next Marvel Studios project, will start up production.
According to Hill, she "heard June 12 is [the] expected start date for Thunderbolts."
While production is still a few months away, there's at least one star of the upcoming MCU project who is savoring their free time.
Previously, David Harbour, who plays the MCU's Red Guardian, shared that Marvel Studios and Netflix's Stranger Things are "going to have to sort of share [him]" for both productions:
“It’s going to have to be a back-and-forth with me. [Marvel Studios and 'Stranger Things' are] going to have to sort of share me. And so it is kind of like, I don’t know exactly how they’re working it, but it’s a week on, week off, two weeks on, two weeks off, something like that where I would go back and forth."
Despite all the work it will be, Harbour seems to be looking on the bright side of the situation. At the end of the day, the two structured around each other is simply convenient:
"They both are being shot in Atlanta. That may have also been structured in a certain way, but yes, it is helpful. So I can just literally shoot a scene in 'Stranger Things' and get in my car and run over to the Marvel scene to shoot a scene there maybe.”
Sebastian Stan's Bucky and His New Crew
Recently, Marvel Studios President Kevin Feige revealed that Bucky Barnes would be the "de facto leader" of the team, a role many believed would go to Florence Pugh's Yelena Belova.
As exciting as it is to have Bucky leading the Thunderbolts, and navigating all the new dynamics that come along with them, it's still strange how he seemingly won't factor into the fourth Captain America film.
One would think that after everything both Sam and he faced over on Disney+, Bucky would be one of the first allies the new Cap calls for when he finds trouble.
It doesn't even seem to be a scheduling issue, seeing as both New World Order (which is scheduled to begin production this month) and Thunderbolts film one after the other with little-to-no overlap.
There's always the chance that the two projects film one right after the other to better fit Sebastian Stan's schedule. Perhaps Marvel Studios intends to surprise the audiences, and fans will actually be seeing Bucky Barnes all over 2024's biggest MCU adventures.
Captain America: New World Order lands in theaters on May 3, 2024, while Thunderbolts is set to hit theaters on July 26 that same year.
