Just a couple of days ago, news broke that Steven Yeun had exited his role in Marvel’s upcoming Thunderbolts movie. The move was sudden, but not completely out of left field. Yeun, a recent Oscar nominee for Minari and Emmy nominee for Beef, is hotter than ever right now. And with delays caused by the SAG-AFTRA and WGA strikes, Yeun’s schedule was undoubtedly getting tight.
Well, now Yeun has confirmed to Variety his reason for leaving Thunderbolts. Sure enough, it has to do with timing.
“I think for me, time passing and things shifting kind of pulled me out of it,” Yeun explained.
He had good things to say about director Jake Schreier, who he previously worked with on episodes of Beef.
“But Jake [Schreier], I know, is going to do an incredible job. I wanna do a Marvel movie It took a lot of drafts on email to make sure that I conveyed the sincerity of how sorry I was to have to back out.”
Yeun still has hopes of playing a Marvel character someday. However, he’s reluctant to reveal who that is for fear of it not coming true…
“I think it’s too early to say that. I probably pissed off too many people leaving, so I’m just gonna say, ‘Thank you for having me.’ I have some ideas. But I heard if you put it out there, you’ll never get it, so I’ll keep it close to my chest.”
This does all seem to have happened fairly quickly, but that’s how things go sometimes. Yeun will have one of the most anticipated films at Sundance later this month, starring opposite Kristen Stewart in Love Me.
As for Thunderbolts, it’s still set to open on July 25th 2025, but delays continue to be an issue. We’ll see if it can hit the target date or not.
