When Thunderbolts was announced at SDCC, it garnered a ton of excitement. Currently set to release on July 26, 2024, the film will unite for the first time a team of unlikely allies and previous MCU antagonists. But how long will they be united under the watchful eye of Julia Louis-Dreyfus’ Val, and how long before there’s backstabbing, power grabs, or it all just goes sideways for everyone, is anyone’s guess. And that is why Thunderbolts is likely to be a really fun unpredictable installment for the MCU. Keeping in step with the idea of this production being fun and unpredictable is the Thunderbolts‘ working title.
Thunderbolts’ working title is tied to a Captain – but not the one you think
We can exclusively report from our sources that Thunderbolts is using the working title Oops All Berries. This name is probably familiar to you if you’ve ever perused a grocery store cereal aisle. It’s very close to the same name as the Quaker Oats Company’s Crunch Berry cereal spinoff. The cereal goes by OOPS! All Berries (although the working title lacks the exclamation point and capital letters).
Besides being a delicious and crunchable cereal with a name that has launched a thousand memes, what could the name point to? We don’t know exactly – working titles can be in-jokes or bits from comics. But they sometimes have hints about what the folks behind a production are thinking. It’s a fun fandom pastime to speculate about a possible deeper meaning about them.
As it would happen, there is a case for Thunderbolts and Oops All Berries making some sense. There’s actually a possible Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. connection that might shed some light on why Thunderbolts is using this particular working title.
Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. and Oops All Berries
There’s a relatively direct point of connection between the Marvel world and Cap’n Crunch, and it has to do with Phil Coulson. Coulson, played by Clark Gregg, starred in the show that aired on ABC for seven seasons. Season 5 has the Oops All Berries connection I’m referring to today.
In “Rise and Shine,” cereal is a minor plot point. The larger purpose of the episode is to provide an origin story episode for General Hale (Catherine Dent) while giving us a glimpse of the motives of the Confederacy. It’s chock full of flashbacks. But in the present AoS timeline of the episode, Coulson is Hale’s “voluntary” prisoner at the HYDRA Preparatory Academy bunker.
Hale wants to convince Coulson and S.H.I.E.L.D. to team up with HYDRA. At one point in the episode, Coulson is in the mess hall with Ruby and comments on the bunker’s accommodations and the abysmal breakfast. He spots the OOPS! All Berries, comments to Ruby about them and takes the box back to his room where he eats the cereal.
As he’s chowing down, General Hale comes in to chat and continues trying to convince him about the S.H.I.E.L.D./HYDRA team-up in the face of a huge threat. Thunderbolts is a team-up movie, so perhaps we’ll see former enemies coming together as uneasy allies to face a more significant threat, or perhaps it will simply be a case of the Thunderbolts being “voluntary prisoners” like Coulson. Or perhaps there’s no connection to this episode at all. Whatever the reasoning is, it’s certainly a working title that took us by surprise.
What is known so far about Thunderbolts
The internet freaked out in excitement when Marvel announced a Thunderbolts movie at SDCC earlier this year. Kevin Feige spoke to packed Hall H and said the movie would close out Phase 5. We later learned that Jake Schreier would direct it and Eric Pearson, of Black Widow and Thor: Ragnarok, would write it.
In September at D23, Marvel announced the film’s cast via shiny concept art from Marvel Director of Visual Development, Andy Park. The cast is stacked with an Avengers-worthy lineup. David Harbour is Red Guardian, and Florence Pugh is Yelena Belova. Sebastian Stan returns as the Winter Soldier, and Wyatt Russell is US Agent. The concept art reveals two other cast members Hannah John-Kamen as Ghost and Olga Kurylenko as the Taskmaster. And then there’s Val, played by Julia Louis-Dreyfus.
Thunderbolts is scheduled to release in theaters on July 26, 2024. But as Cosmic Circus writer Alex Perez noted recently, things could change for it and many other Marvel productions. You can look to our recent report about the delay in the Disney+ series Echo for a recent example of the shifting schedule. We’ve been keeping up with potential changing Marvel release dates and changes to the plan.
What do you think about this working title? Do you suddenly have a hankering for sugary cereal? Are you filling in your Marvel LLC/working title spreadsheets? Please join the conversation and share your thoughts on Twitter @MyCosmicCircus or The Cosmic Circus Discord.
Disney restructuring and how it will affect Marvel Studios
