Watch the new trailers for Thunderbolts* and Gladiator II

It's the start of a new week, and clearly Hollywood studios woke up and decided it must start with a bang. We've got a trailer party on our hands, people!

After going through something of an existential crisis over the past couple of years, Marvel Studios is finally getting its footing back under it. This year only held one Marvel movie, Deadpool & Wolverine, and it was a smash success. On the television front, Agatha All Along is now playing on Disney+, which is the only live-action Marvel show to drop on the platform since Echo premiered back in January. Marvel is going for quality over quantity now, after a while of doing the latter.

And now we have our first look at another of the studio's upcoming movies: Thunderbolts*. We've known this film was coming for a while, but the asterisk in the title only made its debut this morning. What does it mean? I don't know, but you can watch and try to parse it for yourself:

Thunderbolts* trailer

Set to The Pixies' song "Where Is My Mind," this trailer brings a pretty interesting vibe compared to any other Marvel project. Thunderbolts* is the Marvel equivalent of The Suicide Squad, all about a group of villains and antiheroes who now team up to take down some even greater danger. It stars Florence Pugh (Yelena Belova), David Harbour (Red Guardian) and Olga Kurylenko (Taskmaster) from Black Widow, Hannah John-Kamen (Ghost) from Ant-Man and the Wasp, Wyatt Russell (John Walker) from The Falcon and the Winter Soldier, Lewis Pullman, who plays mysterious newcomer Bob, and Sebastian Stan as MCU mainstay Bucky Barnes aka the Winter Soldier. They'll be teaming up for a dangerous covert operation at the behest of the Julia Louis-Dreyfus, who plays Valentina Allegra de Fontaine.

The general set up for this movie has always felt pretty fun, but the trailer infuses it with some emotional weight by reuniting Pugh and Harbour before launching the group into some bonkers-looking action scenes. I'm officially excited!

Thunderbolts* is out in theaters on May 2, 2025.

Gladiator II trailer

Over at Paramount, a brand new trailer dropped for Gladiator II, the sequel to Ridley Scott's acclaimed 2000 film. Scott is back directing this one, and it looks pretty damn epic. Rhinos! Daring sword fights! A naval battle in a colosseum! However you feel about studios reviving legacy properties years later, you've gotta admit that this thing looks like it was made to be seen on the biggest screen possible.

Gladiator II stars Paul Mescal as Lucius Verus II, a newphew of Joaquin Phoenix's Emperor Commodus from the first film. After he's forced into slavery, Lucius ends up catching the eye of Denzel Washington's Macrinus, who The Hollywood Reporter calls a "wealthy power broker and arms dealer." That arms dealer part is interesting, because this movie certainly looks like all the stops are being pulled out in the colosseum — maybe as a way for Macrinus to bolster his own reputation?

Rounding out the cast are Pedro Pascal as General Marcus Acacius, Joseph Quinn as Emperor Geta, and Connie Nielsen reprising her role from Gladiator as Lucilla. Gladiator II bows in theaters on November 22.

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