Before the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s misfit team of the Thunderbolts* was revealed as the “The New Avengers”, the film went through several iterations that could’ve made the movie feel even bigger and more wild.
According to screenwriter Eric Pearson, early drafts of the film featured some surprising characters who didn’t make the final cut, including Laurence Fishburne’s Bill Foster a.k.a. Goliath, Harrison Ford’s Red Hulk, and the fan-favorite manipulator himself, Baron Zemo, played by Daniel Brühl. Pearson told ComicBook.
“I don’t think there was anybody I asked for that we didn’t get. There was a point where I wanted Red Hulk to be the villain and [Marvel Studios] said, ‘No.’
“I was annoyed and now I’m happy. The Sentry is the perfect person [for the villain role]. Any time you think you have it figured out and they tell you that you can’t do it, you are annoyed.”
Red Hulk, of course, was being saved for Captain America: Brave New World, where Ford’s Thaddeus “Thunderbolt” Ross went through his big transformation. But Pearson wasn’t just eyeing Red Hulk, he also wanted to bring back Bill Foster in a more active role.
“There was a draft or two where Bucky was not involved, and there was a draft or two where Bill Foster was involved. Ava’s surrogate father, he comes in with [a role] bigger than a cameo and has a Goliath kind of moment and joins the team towards the end.”
Foster became Goliath by using Pym Particles to grow to massive size, essentially becoming a Giant-Man of his own. The idea of pairing him with Alexei/Red Guardian as two fatherly figures was floated, but it didn’t stick. Pearson said:
“I think there was something with two old guys, [Foster] and [Alexei], who are not exactly fathers, but acting as fathers. I forget why that was pulled out. Probably because he didn’t have the same background trauma that these other characters had, which was the unifying theme.”
The studio and director Jake Schreier also toyed with the idea of adding Man-Thing and Baron Zemo into the mix. Both characters have deep roots in Thunderbolts lore.
After all, Zemo literally created the team in the comics as part of an elaborate con, and Man-Thing served on the supernatural version of the team led by Luke Cage.
“Jake was very excited about doing Man-Thing. The other one was Zemo. ‘Let’s get Zemo in there.’ We talked about it a lot. It wasn’t, ‘No, let’s deny the audience these people or deny our director this character that he wanted to use.’ It was more like, ‘Let’s talk about it and find a way that doesn’t break the story we are trying to tell.’”
Zemo ultimately didn’t fit. As cool as it would have been to see Daniel Brühl’s scheming Sokovian pop back up after his Disney+ run in The Falcon and the Winter Soldier, this story had other goals.
“What was very important to me is I found a story that wasn’t just a rehash of [DC’s] Suicide Squad. We have had two Suicide Squad movies recently and the last thing I wanted to do was, ‘Hey, we are going to put a team together.’
“Not because it’s a bad story, but it’s just because it is a story audiences are familiar with. They sit in there and say, ‘Oh, I know the moves of this story.’”
The final version of Thunderbolts* still pulls deep from Marvel’s bench: Yelena, John Walker, Ghost, and Taskmaster start things off, while Red Guardian and Bucky enter later, with Sentry bringing a destabilizing wildcard into the mix.
But knowing how close we were to seeing a full-on Zemo-led operation or a Goliath-sized return? That’s just a fun little “what if” that will fuel fan discussions.
In the comics, Zemo, Goliath, and Red Hulk, were core parts of the Thunderbolts legacy. Zemo’s team masqueraded as heroes during the post-Onslaught Marvel Universe. Red Hulk led his own aggressive version of the team alongside Punisher, Elektra, Deadpool, and Venom. Goliath was a founding member in Zemo’s original lineup.
In the end, the characters that did end up in the movie were perfect for the story that was told.
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