Earlier this month, Marvel Studios' Thunderbolts lost Steven Yeun due to apparent scheduling conflicts. The Beef actor had been tapped to play The Sentry, a character widely believed to be the threat this team assembles to take down (Task Force X-style).
It was recently reported that an offer to take over the role had been sent out to Austin Abrams. The actor is best known for his roles in The Walking Dead and Euphoria and, in the eyes of many fans, his potential casting felt like something of a step down from a powerhouse talent such as Yeun.
Well, Abrams is now said to have passed on The Sentry, leaving Marvel Studios to find someone else who is willing to don the Golden Guardian's iconic costume.
Thunderbolts seems to have faced its fair share of challenges since being announced, many of which were caused by last year's WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes. It also wasn't too long ago that we heard Hannah John-Kamen may have dropped out of the project as Ghost, though she'd later claim otherwise.
We recently took a look at some of the actors who could play the MCU's Sentry in place of Yeun. You can check that out here.
In the comics, Steve Rogers was initially the only person the Super Soldier Serum worked on. Other government agencies struggled to create their own versions, and it was in the late 1940s that Project: Sentry was first dreamed up.
Meant to create a hero who was 100,000 more powerful than the serum that created Captain America, the project ultimately got bogged down in red tape. However, years later, a meth addict called Robert Reynolds broke into the laboratory of one of the professors who worked on that and ingested the "Golden Sentry Serum" while looking for his latest hit.
With that, he gained the power of a million exploding suns, later becoming one of the Marvel Universe's greatest superheroes. There was a twist, though, as The Void - Reynolds' repressed personality - later emerged and took the form of a shadowy monster every bit as powerful as the Golden Guardian. It killed millions and continued to plague The Sentry in the years that followed.
Thunderbolts' confirmed cast members include Julia Louis-Dreyfus as Valentina Allegra de Fontaine, Florence Pugh as Yelena Boleva, Sebastian Stan as Bucky Barnes, David Harbour as Red Guardian, Wyatt Russell as U.S. Agent, Hannah John-Kamen as Ghost, and Olga Kurylenko as Taskmaster.
Written by Eric Pearson and Lee Sung Jin, and directed by Jake Schreier, Thunderbolts is currently set to be released in theaters on July 25, 2025.