Marvel’s second big MCU theatrical release of 2025 is playing in theaters, and it’s already shaping up to be a great success. The Thunderbolts* premieres in Europe and the US brought us great reviews for the most surprising Marvel crossover in recent years, as well as leaks for the plot, the credits scenes, and the mysterious asterisk in the title.
The film made $76 million at the US box office and topped $162 million globally. Thunderbolts* doesn’t look like a Marvel film that will top $1 billion during its theatrical run, but these figures speak volumes for Marvel. Captain America 4 topped $88 million during its opening weekend in the US, eventually ending its theatrical run at over $414 million worldwide, split about halfway between the US and the rest of the world.
But the scrappy team of Thunderbolts might do even better at the box office now that Marvel has started showing the film’s real title: The New Avengers. That’s right, it’s no longer a spoiler. The Thunderbolts* film is actually an Avengers movie.
The Thunderbolts become Avengers by the end of the flick, and they’ll be the first line of defense against Robert Downey Jr.’s Doctor Doom in Avengers: Doomsday, which is currently filming.
While the surprise title reveal is no longer a spoiler, as you’ll see it everywhere on social media and billboards in your town, some spoilers from the film might follow below.
Thunderbolts* didn’t always have that asterisk in the title. At some point, while developing its master plan for the Multiverse Saga, Marvel decided to turn the film into something special, by adding that asterisk at the end of the title. This signaled the title was just a placeholder, as was the team name.
Soon, we saw leaks that the Thunderbolts team would become the newly anointed Avengers by the end of the movie. The theories that popped up online said the same thing, with a twist. Initially, the Thunderbolts were expected to be called the Dark Avengers.
But as we got closer to the film’s release, it became clear that the name was not good. Who would call themselves that? New Avengers sounds a lot better, and that’s what Marvel went for. Val (Julia Louis-Dreyfus) will be known in the MCU for coming up with the New Avengers title as a clever marketing twist that got her out of all her legal troubles.
If you’ve somehow been living under a wrong, oblivious to all the chatter about the Thunderbolts* title, you might have been surprised to see the film start playing in theaters without a proper title showing up on the screen.
The action begins right after the Marvel logo is taken over by darkness, foreshadowing what will happen later in the movie when Bob (Lewis Pullman) becomes The Void and takes over New York City.
But by the end of the film, you might have realized what Valentina saw. This team has potential, and Marvel will want to do something with them, now that most team members have redeemed themselves. I say most because Bucky was already considered an Avenger in The Falcon and the Winter Soldier.
That must have been a glorious surprise to anyone not following leaks like myself. I knew what would happen all along, and I still had fun watching the movie.
I was surprised, however, to see social media flooded on Sunday afternoon with photos showing that Marvel was already “correcting” the Thunderbolts* billboards by giving the film its real title: *The New Avengers.
Marvel is dying to spoil that surprise and tell everybody that the Multiverse Saga finally has an Avengers movie. It’s not Doomsday or Secret Wars, it’s Thunderbolts*, where we get to see a new edition of Earth’s mightiest heroes.
Why is Marvel doing it? The same reason for hosting that European premiere before the official US one: word of mouth. See The New Avengers billboards in town and clips on social media, and you’ll want to head to theaters to see Thunderbolts*. The clever marketing campaign may give Marvel’s second MCU movie of the year a longer tail than Brave New World.
One thing that Captain America 4 lacked, like most Multiverse Saga movies before it, was a good Avengers hook. Sam Wilson (Anthony Mackie) at least decided to form his own New Avengers, which is a problem now that the Thunderbolts are called that, but that’s all Brave New World gave us. Even the film’s credits scene wasn’t as spectacular as what we saw at the end of Thunderbolts*.
What I’m getting at is that Thunderbolts* might do a lot better than Captain America: Brave New World did in theaters, and Marvel revealing to the world that the film’s actual title is The New Avengers could play a big part in that.
