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06 May, 2025
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“Thunderbolts*” stars help rebrand movie as “*The New Avengers”, but what are we really calling it now?
@Source: ew.com
This article contains spoilers about Thunderbolts*... or do we call it *The New Avengers now? Marvel is going all in on the Thunderbolts* title change. The end of the latest MCU movie renames itself *The New Avengers during the credits, and the stars have been helping officially rebrand the film a few days after its release. On Monday, Marvel Studios shared a photo and video of the entire cast ripping the title off the original poster to reveal *The New Avengers with the caption, "Presenting Marvel Studios' #̶T̶h̶u̶n̶d̶e̶r̶b̶o̶l̶t̶s̶* #TheNewAvengers." And Sebastian Stan got to work papering over posters with the original title in a hilariously deadpan video, also shared to Marvel Studios' social media. In the video, the actor behind Bucky Barnes/the Winter Soldier walks up to a poster on the side of a bus stop bench, sets down a bunch of rolled-up posters, and puts up a new one revealing *The New Avengers name change underneath his face. He nods to himself on the job well done and continues walking off camera, presumably to keep updating posters elsewhere. Watch the unserious video below: After almost a year of buildup, Thunderbolts* finally revealed what that mysterious asterisk in the title means at the end of the movie (now playing in theaters), and the director and stars previously told Entertainment Weekly that the new name will have a major impact on the MCU's future. But which title are we all using for this movie now? If you try to buy tickets to see it from Fandango, AMC Theatres, or Regal Cinemas, you'll see the updated *The New Avengers poster in the app and on the website. But the movie is still called Thunderbolts* on the actual ticket-buying pages. Representatives for Marvel, AMC Theatres, and Regal Cinemas did not immediately respond to EW's request for comment on how deep this name change goes. This isn't the first time a movie has officially changed its title post-release. There are far too many examples to count them all, but some of the most notable are 1977's Star Wars later becoming Star Wars: Episode IV — A New Hope, similar to how Raiders of the Lost Ark expanded to become Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark once Stephen Spielberg's film became a franchise. This does, however, seem to be the first time a movie planned in advance to change its title a few days after its release for narrative purposes — and not because the original title was confusing or bad. During the surprisingly emotional action film, Bucky, Yelena Belova (Florence Pugh), U.S. Agent/John Walker (Wyatt Russell), Alexei Shostakov/Red Guardian (David Harbour), and Ava Starr/Ghost (Hannah John-Kamen) originally took on the Thunderbolts name as a joke, in reference to Yelena's terrible peewee soccer team. But after they save the day from Bob's (Lewis Pullman) villainous alter ego, the Void, Valentina Allegra de Fontaine (Julia Louis-Dreyfus) publicly takes credit for their success — and renames them the New Avengers against their will. While the group decides to go along with it, Yelena whispers in Val's ear, "We own you now." The new name seems to stick, as the end credits rip the Thunderbolts* title card down to reveal the title: The New Avengers. Thunderbolts* director Jake Schreier previously told EW that renaming the movie and the group the New Avengers "was in the script from the very first draft." "Even though a lot of things, almost everything, changed around it," the director says. "There was the core idea of these operatives sent to kill each other, which I thought was such a neat twist on people expecting Marvel's Suicide Squad. And then that was the ending, and it went to a very different place, but that was the one thing that was like, no matter what we do, it's going to end in that place." Want more movie news? Sign up for Entertainment Weekly's free newsletter to get the latest trailers, celebrity interviews, film reviews, and more. He continued, "There's these little hints, so that it doesn't feel like a total left turn when [the name change] happens. And then also in the credits, in both of our post-credit sequences, acknowledging that this is not necessarily the most comfortable or perfect fit, and that it'll be fun to watch how that goes going forward." The director said we should be calling it *The New Avengers moving forward, but the original title can still work if you'd prefer it. "If you want to [still] call it Thunderbolts*, that's okay," Schreier said. "The asterisk was part of my last pitch meeting before getting the job. I thought it would be a small thing — we should have one sign, put an asterisk on it, and say, 'Until we come up with something better.' And then they really ran with that and embraced that. And it felt like, at this studio, with the amount of attention on it, it's a place where you could pull off something like that." But which title will the fans be using movie forward? Let us know your choice in the comments below.
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