Filmmaker Jake Schreier and actor Steven Yeun first collaborated on Netflix's Beef, and original plans called for them to reunite on Marvel Studios' Thunderbolts*.
The Invincible star was supposed to play Bob/The Sentry/The Void, but scheduling conflicts caused by 2023's Hollywood strikes forced him to drop out of the MCU movie (now, rumours are swirling he could be Spider-Man: Brand New Day's Mister Negative).
Marvel Studios is thought to have approached a few different actors before Top Gun: Maverick star Lewis Pullman boarded the movie. Talking to The New York Times, Schreier addressed the challenge of finding someone willing to fill the role.
"I think the hardest part is that they don’t get to read a script," he shared. "That’s a big leap for any actor to take. I met up with Lewis back in L.A. and we were scrambling because I think we were maybe a month out at that point."
"I basically gave him the oral history of Thunderbolts because I wasn’t allowed to give him the script, but it’s like, 'I will tell you the whole story, I will show you the concept art, I’ll show you the animatics,'" Schreier continued. "I just really tried to show him how interesting the character could be and why it would be worth taking that leap."
"These things are so secretive. Also, I think there is this trust that we’ll get in there and we’ll figure it out together. Something Kevin [Feige] always talks about is you can never come into a Marvel meeting at any point of the process and say, 'I think we’re done, I think this is it.' It’s always, 'This is good. Here’s how we think we can make it better.'"
"Lewis absolutely got to be part of the development, and he and Florence worked on the scenes," the director, who will next tackle Marvel Studios' X-Men reboot, confirmed. "We rewrote stuff, made it work better and fit the role to him."
That finally debunks the notion that Pullman was little more than a last-minute replacement...and that Valentina Allegra de Fontaine's remarks about The Sentry being "invincible" were a nod to Yeun's other superhero role.
Schreier went on to say that he was "apprehensive" about taking Bob to such dark places, but praised Marvel Studios and Feige for "pushing me toward making it different than what they had done."
"If you have the Sentry and the Void [the Sentry’s villainous alter ego] in your movie, you’re going to have to go there. We talked to Paul Jenkins, who created the character, and it always was a parable for mental health."
"Also, he is extraordinarily overpowered and his only kryptonite is that there’s this Void side to him. If you’re going to make any movie that works with that character in it, it’s going to have some amount of internal conflict that works as well as the external conflict," the filmmaker concluded.
The Sentry will return in Avengers: Doomsday alongside his fellow New Avengers, though it's unclear what kind of role he'll play in the movie given his reluctance to suit up again (for fear of unleashing The Void).
Avengers: Doomsday is set to be released on May 1 2026, with Avengers: Secret Wars scheduled to arrive on May 7, 2027. Thunderbolts* *The New Avengers is now playing in theaters.