Thunderbolts Gets a New Screenwriter
Marvel’s newest superteam is getting a new script. Variety exclusively reports that Lee Sung Jin has been brought in to rewrite the Thunderbolts screenplay. As with pretty much everyone Marvel hires for creative work, you’ve probably never heard of Lee Sung Jin; he’s written episodes of various TV shows, including It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, Two Broke Girls, and Tuca & Bertie. He’s also the showrunner of the upcoming Netflix comedy Beef. Also affiliated with Beef is Thunderbolts director Jake Schreier, who also directed Beef. Thunderbolts, which stars a bunch of supporting Marvel characters (the biggest gun among them is Sebastian Stan’s Bucky Barnes; we’re in the big leagues now, folks), is supposed to start filming in June, in case you were wondering if the series of flops that constituted Phase 4 has encouraged Marvel to take its preparations a little more seriously.
I’ve been saying it ad nauseam lately, but Marvel’s creative announcements never generate any excitement anymore. I have no idea if Lee Sung Jin is a good writer because I’ve never seen anything he’s written (although I caught a little bit of Two Broke Girls while in an optometrist’s waiting room with my pupils dilated; Kat Dennings still looked hot). On the other hand, I loved some of the pre-Marvel work from the writers who gave us She-Hulk, Loki, and Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania. It also appears that Jake Schreier brought Lee Sung Jin aboard because he likes working with him, based on what Lee has said. But I doubt he had to twist anyone’s arm, because this is Marvel’s hiring style to a T. It’s the blandest of news because it doesn’t change my interest in Thunderbolts at all. I do find it amusing that they’ve got a little over two months before the movie starts shooting, and they’re having the script rewritten; the lack of care they put into everything they do now is evident in their actions as much as in the finished products.
