Steven Yeun will no longer appear in Marvel’s upcoming movie Thunderbolts.

The Walking Dead actor, who was first reported to be cast in the Marvel movie back in February, will no longer be involved with the project, according to The Hollywood Reporter.

His exit is reportedly due to scheduling issues as the result of last year’s writers’ and actors’ strikes, which delayed filming for many months. The strikes ended in November but filming has yet to begin on that Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) instalment.

Yeun was never officially confirmed as a cast member by Marvel and it was not known what character he would play.

Marvel regulars Florence Pugh, Sebastian Stan, David Harbour and Wyatt Russell were unveiled as the stars of Thunderbolts at Disney’s D23 presentation in 2022.

The movie, about a group of supervillains who are recruited to go on missions for the government, will reportedly also star established Marvel actors Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Olga Kurylenko and Hannah John-Kamen as well as Harrison Ford, who will make his debut as Thaddeus ‘Thunderbolt’ Ross in Captain America: Brave New World.

During an appearance on the Happy Sad Confused podcast in November, Russell revealed that he had not read a finished script and joked that the cast and crew “almost started shooting that about 14 times” due to the strikes.

“I have confidence it’s gonna be good. I know everybody is sort of on this Marvel train right now of things not going so well,” he added. “But it’s not a straightforward Marvel movie as you’ve seen in the past. I think that it’s gonna be a lot of fun but I think it will be something that hopefully Marvel fans will look at and go, ‘Oh OK, this is a little different, let’s go hard at it.'”

Thunderbolts, directed by Jake Schreier, is due to be released in July 2025.

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