Marvel Studios may have released only one film last year, but it has three theatrical titles coming in 2025. The movies in question — February’s Captain America: Brave New World, May’s Thunderbolts*, and July’s The Fantastic Four: First Steps — all promise to move the Marvel Cinematic Universe‘s Multiverse Saga forward in their own unique ways. The three also seem very different from each other. Brave New World, for instance, is being marketed as a paranoid political thriller, while Fantastic Four has seemingly adopted a retro-futuristic, ’60s-inspired aesthetic.
As for Thunderbolts*, one of the film’s stars says that it has more in common with a classic 1980s coming-of-age dramedy than comic book fans may expect. “Thunderbolts* is really interesting because it was so fun, man,” Sebastian Stan, who is set to make his MCU return as Bucky Barnes in the forthcoming film, revealed during his recent appearance on Variety’s Awards Circuit Podcast. “I’m curious to see how people are going to respond [to it] because the closest [film] that comes [to mind] is that movie The Breakfast Club.”
“It’s really that. It’s an odd group thrown together, and the humor is in there, the tone is in there. They’re all misfits,” Stan continued. “I’m excited about it.”
Stan’s comments may come as a surprise. However, Thunderbolts* really is primed to bring together an unlikely assortment of existing MCU characters, including Stan’s Bucky, Florence Pugh’s Yelena Belova, David Harbour’s Alexei Shostakov, Wyatt Russell’s John Walker, Olga Kurylenko’s Taskmaster, Hannah John-Kamen’s Ghost, and Julia Louis-Dreyfus’ Valentina Allegra de Fontaine, among others.
Whether or not Thunderbolts* will be able to forge a cohesive group out of its misfit protagonists as well as The Breakfast Club does with its teenaged characters remains to be seen. Thanks to its idiosyncratic trailers, cast, and Stan’s recent comments, though, it’s clear now that the film, at the very least, is striving to be more interesting than its straightforward team-up story suggests on paper.
Thunderbolts* is set to hit theaters on May 2.
Some of the best shots in Grok Imagine’s AI-made Odyssey don’t contain actors. Ancient landscapes stretch into the distance. Close-ups of grimy hands suggest people who have touched something rougher than a keyboard. For a few seconds, the illusion holds.
https://twitter.com/imagine/status/2113712964419063911
YouTube videos could soon look better without eating quite so much data, right? Thankfully, the platform plans to introduce a new video format called AV2 on its web player in early 2027, promising more efficient streaming and potentially fewer playback hiccups on slower internet connections. The big headline is a roughly 30% improvement in compression efficiency over AV1, YouTube's existing video format. That doesn't guarantee every video will use 30% less data, but it could make streaming a little easier on both internet connections and data allowances.
What is AV2, and why should viewers care?
YouTube is changing how its Home page works, giving viewers more control over what shows up there and making some of the app’s most-used sections easier to reach. Custom Feeds are now replacing the existing topic chips for eligible users, while YouTube is also testing a redesigned top bar on mobile that moves Subscriptions closer to the Home feed.
YouTube first started experimenting with Custom Feeds earlier this year, letting you type out what you wanted to watch and turning that request into its own stream of recommendations. Now, the feature is starting to look less like a side experiment and more like something YouTube actually wants people to use as part of their everyday Home page.