Marvel and Florence Pugh flaunt Thunderbolts*' "badass indie" cred

Reportedly Marvel's least expensive film, Thunderbolts now qualifies as a low-budget indie.

By Matt Schimkowitz | March 9, 2025 | 2:07pm

Photo courtesy of Marvel Studios

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Marvel and Florence Pugh flaunt Thunderbolts*'

Apparently desperate for relevancy among cinephiles and merch enthusiasts, Marvel Studios is likening their upcoming superhero team-up extravaganza, Thunderbolts, to A24. Led by Florence Pugh and Sebastian Stan, the movie follows everyone’s favorite sidekicks, Yelena Belova and Bucky Barnes, in what Marvel is touting as “absolute cinema” and Pugh calls a “badass indie” and an “A24-feeling assassin movie.” Following viral tweets alleging that Thunderbolts is “Marvel’s least expensive film,” Marvel set out to prove its bonafides. A new trailer evoking Marvel killer Martin Scorsese, who will forever live rent-free in the minds of Marvel producers, actors, and fans, touts the various A24 projects the cast and crew of Thunderbolts have worked on. These include the stars of Midsommar, A Different Man, and You Hurt My Feelings, the writers and director of Beef, the cinematographer of Green Knight, and the editor of Minari, among others. The ad comes mere weeks after the memory of Red Hulk and whatever the name of that movie he was in has been snapped from the minds of hundreds of thousands of moviegoers worldwide.

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Clearly, this was part of a spontaneous public relations campaign to convince viewers who have begun to check out of the MCU ever since keeping up with the franchise became an unpaid internship. A day before the ad dropped, star Florence Pugh doubled down on the “ABSOLUTE CINEMA” of it all, telling Empire that the movie “ended up becoming this quite badass indie, A24-feeling assassin movie with Marvel superheroes.” In the same interview, director Jake Schreier, of Beef fame, said that Marvel told him to make “something different.” He returned with a movie harnessing a “certain amount of that Beef tone,” complete with “an emotional darkness” that can only be achieved by a superpowered assassin with a metal arm.