With the official release of Marvel Studios' latest film, "Thunderbolts*", the year-long mystery behind the asterisk has finally been unveiled: it stands for "*The New Avengers." This revelation has sparked a series of engaging and creative promotional activities, with one of the most notable being "Winter Soldier" Sebastian Stan personally taking to the streets to swap out movie posters.
Marvel Studios recently released a video on social media showing Sebastian Stan, dressed in all black, holding rolled-up movie posters. He stops at a bus station and replaces the original "Thunderbolts*" poster with the new "*The New Avengers" version. The simple yet symbolic scene marks the official debut of this antihero team under its new name.
In addition to Stan's street-level stunt, Marvel also released another promotional video featuring the full cast, led by Florence Pugh. The video includes Olga Kurylenko, Hannah John-Kamen, Wyatt Russell, David Harbour, Geraldine Viswanathan, Lewis Pullman, and Julia Louis-Dreyfus.
In the clip, Pugh dramatically tears away the "Thunderbolts*" title on a poster to reveal "The New Avengers" underneath, to an enthusiastic reception. This event is presumed to have been filmed at a premiere in Los Angeles.
This meticulously planned "star reveal" marketing campaign by Marvel had been in the works for some time. Director Jake Schreier previously stated in an interview that if Valentina Allegra de Fontaine was introducing a new Avengers team to the world, then the marketing should reflect that.