Marvel Studios has changed the release dates for Thunderbolts and Fantastic Four.
According to Deadline, Thunderbolts will now release on May 2, 2025, with Fantastic Four to follow on July 25, 2025.
The news comes following on the heels of the company announcing the cast for the latter film. Pedro Pascal will play Reed Richards, AKA Mister Fantastic, with Vanessa Kirby as Sue Storm, AKA The Invisible Woman. Joseph Quinn will play Johnny Storm, AKA Human Torch, and Ebon Moss-Bachrach will play Ben Grimm, AKA The Thing. All of them will be debuting as their characters in Fantastic Four, at least as far as we know right now.
The Thunderbolts film will feature several characters who have already appeared in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Those include Sebastian Stan as Bucky Barnes, AKA Winter Soldier, Florence Pugh as Yelena Belova, Wyatt Russell as John Walker, AKA U.S. Agent, Olga Kurylenko as Taskmaster, David Harbour as Alexei Shostakov, AKA Red Guardian, Hannah John-Kamen as Ava Starr, AKA Ghost, and Julia Louis-Dreyfus as Contessa Valentina Allegra de Fontaine.
Currently, Lewis Pullman is set to play Robert Reynolds, AKA Sentry, having taken the role over from Steven Yeun.
After a busy couple of years, the MCU’s release schedule is notably slowing down in 2024. At present, only Deadpool & Wolverine is set to hit the big-screens. That movie is slated for July 26, 2024, with the next installment in the cinematic universe, Captain America: Brave New World, not coming out until February 14, 2025.
There are a lot of theories surrounding Deadpool & Wolverine, especially following the release of the first trailer. Right now, the big question has been just how the MCU will pull in the Fantastic Four and X-Men, the rights to whom they acquired following Disney’s merger with Fox, and it seems entirely possible that the Merc With a Mouth will be the conduit for that.