Steven Yeun Explains Why He Quit 'Thunderbolts'

The Big Picture

Steven Yeun dropped out of Marvel’s Thunderbolts due to scheduling conflicts and project delays caused by a strike.
Yeun still wants to be part of the MCU and will remain in touch with Marvel.
Thunderbolts has a star-studded cast and will premiere in theaters on July 25, 2025.

Steven Yeun may have dropped out of Marvel’s Thunderbolts, but that doesn’t mean he’s turning his back on the Marvel Cinematic Universe forever, as he told Variety. The news came as a huge surprise after Yeun—best known for his performances on The Walking Dead and Invincible, as well as his turn in the Oscar-nominated Minari—had been cast as an unknown character, which had recently been heavily speculated to be Sentry.

Now, Yeun has spoken during a red carpet interview for a new Louis Vuitton pop-up in West Hollywood, and confirmed that his departure from the film, which will be directed by Yeun’s Beef collaborator, Jake Schreier, was down to a combination of scheduling conflicts and delays to the project caused by last year’s SAG-AFTRA strike. Filming is finally set to get underway this coming spring.

Yeun added that the decision to depart the project—which Marvel never officially confirmed—was an extremely painful one for him, and that it was a decision he hadn’t taken lightly, but confirmed he was still desperate to be part of the MCU going forward and that he would remain in touch with Marvel—once the dust on his sudden departure had settled, that is. “I think for me, time passing and things shifting kind of pulled me out of it,” Yeun explained. “But Jake [Schreier], I know, is going to do an incredible job. I wanna do a Marvel movie.” He went on to say:

“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. I think it’s too early to say [what project I would like to be part of in the future]. 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.”

Who Is in ‘Thunderbolts’?

thunderbolts-team-social-feature — Image via Marvel Studios

Although Yeun has departed the film, Thunderbolts still carries with it an eye-watering cast of both new and returning faces including Sebastian Stan, Florence Pugh, David Harbour, Wyatt Russell, Hannah John-Kamen, Olga Kurylenko, and Julia Louis-Dreyfus alongside newcomers Harrison Ford as Thaddeus ‘Thunderbolt’ Ross (who will make his debut in Captain America: Brave New World), as well as The Bear‘s Ayo Edebiri in an undisclosed role.