Marvel Studios ditches 'Thunderbolts' for 'The New Avengers' in bold post-release stunt

In an unexpected branding move, Marvel Studios has rebranded its latest antihero ensemble film Thunderbolts* as *The New Avengers, just days after the movie’s theatrical release.

The studio made the announcement on X on 6 May, sharing a new movie poster with the updated title and a striking asterisk to signal the shift. A separate post showed cast members Florence Pugh, David Harbour and Sebastian Stan at a Hollywood premiere, dramatically peeling back the old Thunderbolts* title to reveal *The New Avengers underneath.

The asterisk - long a source of online speculation - was confirmed to foreshadow the film’s plot twist, which sees the rogue team rebranding themselves as the next iteration of Earth’s mightiest heroes.

Don't miss: Marvel’s 'Thunderbolts' takes over KL skyline with Merdeka 118 projection

In a cheeky continuation of the campaign, Marvel also shared a video of Stan replacing a Thunderbolts* poster of himself at a bus stop with a *The New Avengers version.

While some fans applauded the meta-reveal and guerrilla-style marketing, others were less convinced. Critics on social media labelled the rebrand a reactive move, suggesting it signalled weak audience interest and a reliance on the Avengers brand to salvage attention. Others argued the focus should have been on tightening the film’s story arc rather than revisiting its title.

*Thunderbolts, now The New Avengers, opened with US$76 million domestically, a figure below Marvel’s typical US$100 million benchmark, according to Variety.

To support its Southeast Asian rollout, Marvel Studios lit up Kuala Lumpur’s Merdeka 118 tower with visuals from *Thunderbolts ahead of the film’s Malaysian release on 1 May. The large-scale projection ran from 29 April to 1 May, rotating taglines such as “Not super. Not heroes. Not giving up” and highlighting the film’s yellow branding.

According to Disney Malaysia, the activation was inspired by a pivotal scene in which Florence Pugh’s character BASE jumps off the skyscraper - a stunt the actress reportedly lobbied to perform herself. The projection took three months to plan and was executed with PNB’s Merdeka Ventures and lighting specialists as a cinematic homage and marketing spectacle.

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