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Marvel Studios’ Thunderbolts has stormed into theaters with a fresh take on the superhero genre—and director Jake Schreier is crediting some of that creative DNA to his earlier work on the critically acclaimed Netflix series Beef.
In a recent interview with The Hollywood Reporter, Schreier reflected on how his collaboration with Lee Sung Jin (aka Sonny Lee), the creator of Beef, helped shape the vision for Thunderbolts—even before the show aired. Schreier served as an executive producer and in-house director on the 2023 breakout hit, and it seems the emotional undercurrents of Beef were instrumental in crafting the tone of his Marvel debut.
“With Beef as our North Star, we really believed there was an opportunity to tell a story about that internality and still have a lot of comedy and action for something that feels big and universal,” Schreier said.
What’s more intriguing? Schreier pitched Thunderbolts to Marvel before Beef even premiered—but he was already set on incorporating a similarly rich emotional texture.
He emphasized that it was Sonny’s long-standing vision to bring stories that reflect raw human experiences into mainstream formats. “Even if it feels odd to have a summer blockbuster with that at its heart, it can work and it can make sense,” Schreier added.
The result? A Thunderbolts film that dives deep into the psychology of its characters—misfits, loners, and morally grey anti-heroes who’ve all been tossed aside by the Marvel machine… until now.
Meet the Squad:
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Florence Pugh returns as the sharp-tongued assassin Yelena Belova
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Sebastian Stan reprises his role as the battle-scarred Bucky Barnes / Winter Soldier
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David Harbour brings both muscle and heart as Red Guardian
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Wyatt Russell suits up again as the conflicted John Walker / U.S. Agent
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Hannah John-Kamen returns as the elusive Ghost
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Olga Kurylenko steps back into the shadows as Taskmaster
All of them are reluctantly roped into a mission orchestrated by Julia Louis-Dreyfus’ enigmatic and manipulative Valentina Allegra de Fontaine, who seems to have her own shadowy agenda.
Unlike the glossy optimism of the Avengers, the Thunderbolts team is comprised of characters weighed down by trauma, regret, and alienation. The film dares to ask: what happens when the Marvel Cinematic Universe hands the reins to its most broken players?
With rich character arcs, brooding tension, and flashes of sharp humor, Thunderbolts is already being praised for blending blockbuster spectacle with the raw emotional grit of prestige TV—no doubt a legacy of Beef’s storytelling ethos.