Marvel Studios unveiled a bold marketing strategy to promote Thunderbolts* with a promotional billboard and online campaign that many MCU fans have decried as a spoiler.
After making $76 million domestically on the film’s opening weekend, Marvel Studios and Thunderbolts* distributor Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures papered over billboards and posters that had the movie’s title on them with a new proposed title that finally explained that asterisk: *The New Avengers
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What does the title change from Thunderbolts* to *The New Avengers mean?
Near the end of the 36th MCU movie, Yelena Belova (Florence Pugh), Bucky Barnes (Sebastian Stan), Red Guardian (David Harbour), John Walker (Wyatt Russell), Ghost (Hannah John-Kamen) and Sentry (Lewis Pullman), the ragtag band of antiheroes known as the Thunderbolts (a name even they couldn’t agree on) are redubbed “the New Avengers” in a slick PR (or CYA) move by CIA director Valentina Allegra de Fontaine (Julia Louis-Dreyfus).
The movie’s post-credit scene takes this rebrand even further, with a potential superhero copyright conflict. Marvel Studios’ marketing campaign seems to follow her lead, not only revealing the new title, but also employing the cast to bring more attention to it.
On Instragram, Marvel Studios revealed footage shot at the film’s premiere that shows Florence Pugh peel away the Thunderbolts* title from a poster to reveal *The New Avengers. On Twitter, Marvel Studios posted a video of Sebastian Stan replacing a character poster of his Winter Soldier with a new updated poster.
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But what do these billboards, posters, and videos touting the title change mean?
Is this movie called Thunderbolts*? Or is it now to be called *The New Avengers? Is this like The Edge of Tomorrow or Ghostbusters (2016), where the studio changed the name of the movie after release? (In the case of those movies to Live Die Repeat and Ghostbusters: Answer the Call, respectively.)
It doesn’t appear so.
On Disney’s official website, the film is still called Thunderbolts*. If you’re booking tickets on Fandango, you’d still be booking Thunderbolts* — even though both sites boast the updated poster. This seems to be a marketing move long in the making, but not an official change of the MCU title.
You can see both old and new posters below.
The original Thunderbolts* Poster
The original Thunderbolts* Poster
Credit: Disney Studios / Marvel Entertainment
The updated *The New Avengers poster
The updated *The New Avengers poster
Credit: Disney Studios / Marvel Entertainment
Thunderbolts* director Jake Schreier explained the marketing move to the New York Times, saying, “It felt like, if Val is also trying to pull a switcheroo and sell the New Avengers to the world, we could do that, too. Especially given that the asterisk has been on the movie for a year, hopefully it doesn’t feel sweaty — it feels like this was a plan and we built up to it.”
Online, the poster swap went over poorly. Fans weren’t upset about the relaunch of the Avengers, but were confused about the seeming title change and annoyed that this third act plot point was outed on the internet and in the real world (via billboards and posters) before the movie had been out even a full week.
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Will this marketing move help or hurt Thunderbolts* as it moves into its second weekend in theaters? We’ll see.
