The ongoing Writers Guild of America strike has now resulted in Marvel Studios pressing pause on several major productions, including the upcoming ensemble movie Thunderbolts. The team-up outing was due to begin filming next month in Atlanta, but Deadline has revealed that the crew have now been notified that production will not continue until “the strike has ended.”

Alongside Thunderbolts, the studio has also decided to stop production on the upcoming television series Wonder Man starring Aquaman’s Yahya Abdul-Mateen II as an actor who gains superpowers. Much like Thunderbolts, Wonder Man was expected to begin shooting next month in Los Angeles and will commence production when the strike comes to an end. Both Marvel projects join the Blade reboot, production on which was halted earlier this month.

Of course, with Marvel being the major franchise that it is, several projects have already begun filming, including Deadpool 3. But this has come with its own issues. It has now been revealed that known improviser Ryan Reynolds will not be able to quip as much as he’d like due to the actor being credited as a writer on the project and therefore obligated not to adjust any lines of dialogue.

The 2023 Writers Guild of America strike began on May 2 after negotiations between the WGA and the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers broke down. The WGA is calling for better working conditions for writers, and in particular the issues surrounding the residuals amid the growing popularity of streaming and the emergence of artificial intelligence tech such as ChatGPT.

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Thunderbolts Currently Has a Release Date of June 2024

David Harbour in Black Widow
Marvel Studios

How much this pause in production will affect the release of Thunderbolts and Wonder Man remains to be seen. Thunderbolts currently has a release date scheduled for July 2024, and will follow a group of heroes and antiheroes, including Bucky Barnes (Sebastian Stan), Ghost (Hannah John-Kamen), U.S. Agent (Wyatt Russell), Valentina Allegra de Fontaine (Julia Louis-Dreyfus), Yelena Belova (Florence Pugh), Red Guardian (David Harbour), and Taskmaster (Olga Kurylenko).

Thunderbolts has already undergone some major rewrites, with known insider Jeff Sneider revealing “that they scrapped the other guys draft. One of the problems with that Thunderbolts draft was that it had a similar problem to what Suicide Squad had, the David Ayer one, in that it was too focused on the Black Widow characters who are going to be in Thunderbolts and it wasn't an equal enough for the team. It just very much emphasized the characters we already knew."

Directed by Jake Schreier and written by Eric Pearson and Lee Sung Jin, Thunderbolts is due to land in theaters on July 26, 2024 as part of Phase Five of the MCU.

As for Wonder Man, the series will be based on the Marvel Comics character of the same name and is set to star Yahya Abdul-Mateen II, Ben Kingsley, Demetrius Grosse, Ed Harris, and Lauren Glazier. The series is expected to debut on Disney+ during the 2023–24 television season.