Thunderbolts Director Recalls Florence Pugh’s Death-Defying Stunt

Jake Schreier‘s winding path to Thunderbolts* feels oddly preordained considering his two roommates at NYU, Jon Watts and Christopher Ford, are also MCU alums. 

In 2012, the Berkeley native kicked off his feature directorial career with the Ford-written Sundance darling, Robot & Frank, before making the jump to the low-key studio hit, Paper Towns (2015). In between it all, he became a prolific television and music video director, helming idiosyncratic series like Kidding and Lodge 49, as well as inventive videos for artists such as Haim, Kendrick Lamar and Benny Blanco.

In 2023, he served as an EP and in-house director on Lee Sung Jin’s (aka Sonny Lee) Beef, which would later win them both an Emmy for outstanding limited or anthology series. The Steven Yeun and Ali Wong-led feud narrative brilliantly balanced dark drama and comedy, while poignantly tracking the internal struggle of each main character. Schreier starting pitching his take on Thunderbolts* before cameras had even rolled on Beef, but he already knew that he wanted to apply the same tonal philosophy.

What resulted is an unlikely team-up of MCU loners and rejects — including Yelena Belova (Florence Pugh), Bucky Barnes (Sebastian Stan), Red Guardian (David Harbour), John Walker (Wyatt Russell), Ghost (Hannah John-Kamen) and Taskmaster (Olga Kurylenko). All of these characters are lonely, unfulfilled and/or depressed in their own unique ways, and they rally together against Valentina Allegra de Fontaine’s (Julia Louis-Dreyfus) sinister act of self-preservation. 

Schreier’s now-critically acclaimed film doesn’t give short-shrift to the characters’ mental health; it’s truly about that very subject. 

“With Beef as our North Star, we just really believed that there was an opportunity to tell a story about that internality and still have a lot of comedy and action for something that feels big and universal,” Schreier tells The Hollywood Reporter. “It was always Sonny’s idea that these kinds of stories are not niche anymore, and even if it feels odd to have a summer blockbuster with that at its heart, it can work and it can make sense.”

Schreier and Lee developed the script together, before fellow Beef writer Joanna Calo joined the mix near production, receiving final co-writing credit alongside Marvel vet Eric Pearson, who initiated the project before Schreier committed. The Beef reunion also extended to production designer Grace Yun, co-editor Harry Yoon and art director Michael Hersey, to name a few. Yeun was originally cast to play the multifaceted role of Bob/Sentry/Void until strike-related schedule shifts led to Lewis Pullman taking his place.

“A close personal friend struggles with [depression], and I mapped Sentry’s arc off of a lot of things that he’s experienced,” Schreier adds. “If you are going to tell a story about something like this, the last thing we want for anyone that struggles, including myself, with what the characters are going through is to feel like we’re being reductive about it or that we’re simplifying it or that we’re saying that it can be even solved. It’s more about the idea that you can bear it with others, but it’s not going to go away.”

Whenever Schreier was concerned about potential spoilers being released through official or unofficial channels, Watts proved to be quite helpful. After all, as the director of the Tom Holland-led Spider-Man “Home” trilogy, Watts’ threequel, Spider-Man: No Way Home, endured some of the most impactful leaks a blockbuster film has ever faced. So, when several of Schreier’s Thunderbolts* actors were announced as part of the Avengers: Doomsday cast at the end of March, Watts helped put things into perspective for his friend.

“I was aware of [the Avengers: Doomsday casting announcement] at the same time the rest of the world was,” Schreier says. “When I would worry about spoilers or things like that, Jon [Watts] would always say, ‘When you sit down in the theater and the lights go down, you forget all of that stuff. You’re in the story.’”

Below, during a recent conversation with THR, Schreier also discusses his Lodge 49 reteam with Russell, as well as the drastically different look that Pugh’s Yelena nearly had in Thunderbolts*.

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THR has a cameo in Thunderbolts’ closing credits. I presume we were at the very, very top of your clearance wishlist?

(Laughs.) Right from the start, I said, “We’ve got to have The Hollywood Reporter. Otherwise, no one is going to believe any of this.”

If you haven’t decided who wrote that cover story yet, I know a guy who’d love to take credit. 

Okay, for the Disney+ version, we can get your name in there. We’ll put it under the headline.

Thank you, Jake. Anyway, I never expected a Marvel movie to meaningfully explore loneliness and depression. How did you pull this off? 

Much like the movie speaks about, you can only do something like this if you really rely on a whole bunch of incredible people around you who also connect with that idea. What was so special about this is all of the great collaborators we had — from Eric Pearson’s first draft to when Lee Sung Jin [aka Sonny], who I worked with on Beef, came in and did multiple drafts. Our friend Joanna Calo then took over into the production phase. She also worked on Beef season one and [co-showran] The Bear. So, with Beef as our North Star, we just really believed that there was an opportunity to tell a story about that internality and still have a lot of comedy and action for something that feels big and universal. 

It was always Sonny’s idea that these kinds of stories are not niche anymore, and even if it feels odd to have a summer blockbuster with that at its heart, it can work and it can make sense. Enough people can relate to that now that it doesn’t feel like you’re making something small. And then the rest is these actors really bringing themselves to it and finding their own way into it. For me, a close personal friend struggles with this, and I mapped Sentry’s arc off of a lot of things that he’s experienced. So, if everyone involved makes it personal, then I think you can really go far.

I’m so attuned to Marvel’s signature tone that I can sense when a joke or a quip is coming to lighten a serious moment, but there were several spots where I was surprised by the restraint. 

We have jokes! It’s funny, I promise. (Laughs.)

Of course, there’s still plenty of humor, but the Yelena-Alexei sidewalk scene is one such example of that restraint. Did you find that ratio in the edit? 

Whatever we found in Beef felt like such a good fit, so that’s kind of just our tone. I know that there’s humor to it. Maybe that humor comes from different places than you might ordinarily expect, and maybe the rhythms are different, but it’s always in there. If you are going to tell a story about something like this, the last thing we want for anyone that struggles, including myself, with what the characters are going through is to feel like we’re being reductive about it or that we’re simplifying it or that we’re saying that it can be even solved. It’s more about the idea that you can bear it with others, but it’s not going to go away. So there were a lot of moments where I would just keep that in mind and make sure not to undercut that emotional place. I would be honest about it and let that stand. But a lot of the people I know who struggle with what we’re talking about are some of the funniest people I know, so we always wanted comedy to be a part of this, not because it was a Marvel movie, but because that feels honest to the world. You don’t have to sacrifice one for the other in that pursuit.

When Beef came out in 2023, you already had this job at the time. Were you able to show some episodes to Marvel ahead of its release? Or did you just deliver the pitch of all pitches?

I started pitching on the movie before we had made Beef, and I think I got the job during the last week of shooting Beef [season one] in Chatsworth, out in the desert. I did show Kevin [Feige] early scenes of it just for fun and to talk about tone and what we were going for [with Thunderbolts*]. So he loved those, and he really encouraged us to keep going further down that direction. But, no, they hadn’t seen any of it when I got the job.

At NYU, you had your own version of the Thunderbolts, and that team included Jon Watts, who you thanked in the credits. Did he provide you with some Marvel life hacks?  

Yeah, he provided me with a lot. First off, Jon was my roommate in college, as was Chris Ford, who created Skeleton Crew. He also wrote my first movie [Robot & Frank]. So a lot of those guys are coming to the premiere, which is fun. I just feel really lucky to have that group of friends. I’ve learned most of what I know about making movies from that collaboration and making movies together, even when it was with a little DV cam in Brooklyn back in the early aughts. 

But, yeah, Jon having all of that experience and doing so well here, it felt like a leg-up in terms of knowing the way Marvel works and what Kevin is looking for, which is that you never stop trying to make it better. In every meeting you come into with Kevin, he always says, “There’s a bunch of good stuff in here, and there’s some things we can improve, so let’s talk about how to make it better.” 

We only really finished this thing, the IMAX version, maybe two-and-a-half weeks ago, and you’re improving it to the last moment. So, if you come in with that attitude and meet [Kevin’s directive] with your own ideas of how to improve it, [Marvel] actually is such a supportive place to work. From the beginning, it was Kevin who was saying, “Make it different. Can you do things in-camera? Can you do it practically?” He really pushed us down that road. 

But I am also really grateful to Jon. He stayed involved, and while we share work with each other anyway, he watched cuts and gave great notes. It’s very good to have generous, talented friends.

Did you and Wyatt Russell have a moment on set where one of you said, “We’ve come a long way since cleaning pools together on Lodge 49”? 

(Laughs.) We absolutely did. Lodge 49 was also shot in Atlanta, but it was shot on not quite as fancy a stage. I think it was an old cat food factory. There’s an insane scene in season two where Paul Giamatti messes up flying an airplane. So everyone has to abandon ship, and there aren’t enough parachutes. Wyatt’s character then grabs Brent Jennings’ character and says, “I won’t let go!” It’s a very silly sequence, and Paul Giamatti is playing this over-the-top character. Another character is a mascot with a [globe] head who runs out of the plane while on fire. But just the way Wyatt said that line in the midst of this madcap weird scene, we all turned to each other and were like, “Damn, Wyatt. That’s some real action-movie acting. Who knows, maybe one day you could do some action stuff.” 

So, if you had told the two of us at that moment in the cat food factory that we would both be back in Atlanta someday working on this scale, we would’ve laughed you out of the room. When we were in London for the premiere, we met up with [creator] Jim Gavin and [co-star] Sonya [Cassidy] for a little Lodge reunion. So it was something we talked about a lot on set. I actually snuck a Lodge tankard into Thunderbolts* as an Easter egg for all the Lodge fans out there.

Florence Pugh’s skyscraper stunt has been a big part of Thunderbolts’ marketing. I know they’re your May competitors, but were you intentionally taking a page out of the Mission: Impossible playbook?

They’re competitors who we love. I love Tom Cruise, and I love those movies. Mission: Impossible — Ghost Protocol was a real touchstone for how to really infuse every action sequence with a strong concept that came from character and to find these funny different routes to how you would have to pull off mission sequences. You can use these resources to create incredible space battles, or you can use them to go out there and really shoot this stuff. The marketing should talk about the jump because it’s a death-defying thing, and I can’t believe Florence did it. But what’s really special about it is that it’s a oner that starts on a closeup of her face. You’re really finding that character in a real emotional moment that is very dark and isolating before pulling out, and within that same take, she’s also going to step off of one of the tallest buildings in the world. And to have her do that while being so in character, that’s what makes it ours. I don’t want to compete with Tom Cruise and all the amazing things that he’s done, but this felt like our spin on it, at least alluding to that kind of stunt. It’s just more like an acting stunt on an emotional level, and that’s how we played it to our strengths.

Florence was originally supposed to film We Live in Time and Thunderbolts* back to back until the 2023 strikes upended that schedule. But was there a period of time where you were expecting Yelena to have a buzz cut for the whole movie? 

We were prepared, yeah. She called me and was like, “It’s going to be great!” And we were like, “Well, let’s talk about it.” And she was like, “Well, I already did it!” And I was like, “Okay, fair enough. We can work with that.” Florence would be amazing in any context, and it would’ve been its own great thing. But for a lot of reasons, it all worked out for the best for her to have that time coming off of that movie and the place that she was in. We also had a chance to step back from what we were making and iterate more and improve it more and really get deeper and deeper into the character. So it all worked out for the best.

Did We Live in Time kick-start the A24-themed trailer? Or did somebody else realize along the way how many A24 alums were on this movie?

That one’s my fault. That was just something that me and my assistant [Samara Handelsman] made as a joke during production. We looked around, and [DP] Andrew [Droz Palermo, who shot David Lowery’s A24 films] was there. [Production designer] Grace Yun [who designed Hereditary and Past Lives] was there, as was Son Lux [who composed Everything Everywhere All at Once]. So we just thought it was funny, and I did not expect anyone to run with it. But Kevin saw it and really liked it, and then he sent it to the marketing department. Asad [Ayaz] and everyone over there have been so great on this movie. I had the song and the colored titles, but they took a joke and really turned it into a real trailer with footage. 

We know we’re not an indie movie, but at the same time, those are the people that made this movie. That part of the joke is real. Grace did such an incredible job on this movie, and Andrew did such a beautiful job shooting the movie. Son Lux put so much effort into the score. [Minari editor] Harry Yoon and Angela Catanzaro worked so hard on the editing and cared so much. So, even if it’s tongue in cheek, it’s nice to put a spotlight on the people who don’t often get talked about in this process.

On the television show Breaking Bad, Jesse Pinkman (Aaron Paul) interviewed for a real estate sales job that was really just a sign-twirling job that his friend Badger (Matt Jones) also had. Both those guys had a very harmful dependence as well. Did this happen to inspire a particular piece of Bob’s (Lewis Pullman) backstory?

I love that show, and while I had forgotten that, it is possible that I lifted it unintentionally from the show. That sequence was something that we added after principal photography. To keep the tonal balance of our movie, we wanted to do something that is dark, but also felt fun to really push that concept to its furthest possible conclusion. It also embraces those Michel Gondry or Spike Jonze-like Being John Malkovich transitions. You can fall through the closet into that space, and it embraces this weird tactile in-camera version of a disorienting world. But, yeah, it was pretty funny to see “Meth Chicken” on the schedule board of a Marvel movie. We felt a little funny about that one. [Writer’s Note: It somehow didn’t dawn on me until after the interview that “Meth Chicken” may have also been unconsciously derived from the Los Pollos Hermanos component of the Breaking Bad universe.]

The Boys is a show that riffs on the superhero industrial complex, including Marvel. Is a particular element of this movie meant to riff on The Boys? 

No, but I think it’s a great show. I’ve seen some of it, not the whole thing, but I loved what I watched. Again, maybe I’m just working from reference and denying it to myself and lifting things without knowing it. But we had a set of references going into this of what a movie about people who don’t trust each but need to work together could be. And we had references for the way to pull off these sequences in a Spike Jonze-Michel Gondry fashion. 

But after that, once you’re out there and you’re making it, you want to just get in there with the people you’re working with and respond to what they bring to it. You don’t want to keep going back to those references or try to be so in-conversation with other pieces of work or something in the world. If you follow it down its own path, then it ideally comes out feeling like its own thing. We’re aware of all the movies that this movie could be compared to, but once we found this more internal narrative that we wanted to tell, it felt like that was our way to distinguish ourselves. So we wanted to just keep following that to its natural conclusion.

How many permutations of the Thunderbolts team did you go through until you landed on this group?

It pretty much stayed [the same] to what you’re now seeing. Eric Pearson developed early drafts with [EP] Brian Chapek at Marvel, and in the first draft I read before I had the job, it was basically this team. And then, one draft later, Sentry got added to it. So that was the one change, but predominantly, the team was the team, except on the margins with characters like Mel or Congressman Gary [Wendell Pierce]. It then became much more about how to go deeper into those characters and really find ways to tie their arcs together into something that would feel resonant. They each had a different angle on the ideas that we were playing with.

A bunch of your Thunderbolts* actors were named during Chairathon 2025. Were you surprised that those Avengers: Doomsday casting announcements were made before the release of Thunderbolts*?

I was aware of it at the same time the rest of the world was. It’s hard with these movies. There’s a lot of attention on them, there’s a lot of marketing, and there’s a lot of stuff that gets out there. So there are things that might have, in some contexts, remained uncertain for people who are really paying attention going into [Thunderbolts*]. But it’s nice to feel like this is all building to something and that it’s part of a larger world and context. When I would worry about spoilers or things like that, Jon [Watts] would always say, “When you sit down in the theater and the lights go down, you forget all of that stuff. You’re in the story.” And maybe that’s something that Kevin told Jon.

So I try to just rely on that and really focus on the story that we’re telling inside of this world and not worry too much about what’s out there. Different people are going to have seen a certain amount or not as much. But no matter what you’ve seen, there is a heart to this movie and a way that it actually functions that has not been spoiled. There’s nothing that really could spoil it because so much of it is about watching these actors really build this relationship together. That is the real engine of what our movie is and how it works.

Lastly, there’s always at least one shot where the cast and crew high-five and hug after nailing it. What was your version of that on Thunderbolts*?

It was really two shots on one special day, the second-to-last day of the whole shoot. First off, to have Florence safely step off of the second tallest building in the world, there were a lot of high-fives and exhales that went with that. And then, on that same day before lunch, we moved over to a street that Grace Yun had completely art-directed with local food stalls. And in one take, with only one shot at it, Florence delivered a great performance while blowing up a whole floor of a building. So we were done by 1:00 PM, and I don’t know if I’ll ever have another day of high-fives and hugs like that in my career.

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Thunderbolts* is now playing in movie theaters nationwide.