Although Captain America: Brave New World slipped out of its 2024 release date due to the 2023 Hollywood strikes, it’s going to be the first Marvel Studios movie of 2025. That’s why Marvel Studios gave Brave New World the spotlight at this year’s CinemaCon by screening the first footage of Anthony Mackie’s solo outing as the new Captain America, Sam Wilson.
Warning: the following contains spoilers from Captain America: Brave New World. If you don’t want to know what happened in the preview, stop reading now.
Via EW, the scenes shown for CinemaCon attendees featured Sam’s first reunion with General Thaddeus “Thunderbolt” Ross since he was elected to be President of the United States. Harrison Ford is taking over the role of Ross from William Hurt who passed away in 2022. And unlike their contentious relationship in Captain America: Civil War and Avengers: Infinity War, Ross actually wants to work with Sam and form a new team of Avengers.
However, complications arise when sleeper agents are activated by a song, including super soldier Isiah Bradley (Carl Lumbly) from The Falcon and the Winter Soldier. And their orders are to kill the President.
After the footage was screened. Mackie told EW that Brave New World has a more grounded tone than some of the other Marvel films.
“It made more sense for it to be more of a grounded espionage action movie as opposed to aliens and airplanes coming through portals and s—,” said Mackie. “Even though I’ve been in so many of them and have seen it all now, the opportunity for Sam to really establish himself as a true action star and Avenger comes with this movie.”
“This movie is a clear reset. It really reestablishes the idea of what this universe is and what this universe is going to be,” added Mackie. “It is a new storyline with new characters, with new beliefs, and it creates a new idea of this new world that we’re going into.”
Marvel also revealed at CinemaCon that Thunderbolts’ title is now Thunderbolts*, with an explanation for the asterisk to come after the film’s release. Kevin Feige also dropped a lot of F-bombs on stage and hinted at a crude Dune-inspired Deadpool popcorn bucket before premiering extended footage from Deadpool and Wolverine. Outside of Marvel, CinemaCon also featured the announcements for a Star Trek prequel movie, Edgar Wright’s remake of The Running Man, and a Transformers/G.I. Joe crossover movie. Henry Cavill even talked about his sword training for the Highlander remake.
