Budgets aren’t the only thing that must be in constant balance to keep the Hollywood machine churning along. They also require carefully planned schedules to keep actors and crew on site for the weeks or months it can take to film an entry in the MCU. The multiple strikes that brought the film industry to a stall in 2023 seem to have caused Steven Yeun to drop out of Marvel’s Thunderbolts film now that it is eyeing a 2025 release date.

Deadline reports that The Walking Dead star would be dropping out of the movie due to scheduling conflicts, with Yeun dropping out after production was moved to 2024 following the end of the SAG-AFTRA strikes in November 2023. His exit is remarkable because Marvel has never officially confirmed that the actor would be in the film and we never found out which character he would be playing. Invincible creator Robert Kirkman may have let it slip that Yeun – who voices the title character in Amazon’s Invincible adaptation – would be playing Sentry in Thunderbolts, but that has never been confirmed by anyone.

We couldn’t find any project involving Steven Yeun that would warrant him dropping out of a high-profile film like Thunderbolts. It could be that he simply didn’t want to wait for another several months for filming to start and risk another schedule change as Marvel continues to try to find its footing after 2023 was largely a disappointment for the studio’s box office numbers. Thunderbolts star Wyatt Russell, who is reprising his role as US Agent in the film, has said that the story will be different from the usual MCU fare we’re used to, but that doesn’t seem to have been enough to keep Steven Yeun from dropping out ahead of filming.

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