It is still unclear how Kevin Feige managed to convince Harrison Ford to sign up for such a massive project in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. But he did it, the legendary movie star is slated to play Thunderbols Ross as a replacement for the late great William Hurt. Unfortunately, William Hurt recently passed away as he was signed to become the leader of the MCU’s anti-hero team: The Thunderbolts. Scooper Jeff Sneider broke the news first.
Kevin Feige has made the decision to not recast other actors who sadly passed away such as Chadwick Boseman’s Black Panther character. However, he finally decided to recast the Thaddeus Ross character because he managed to convince Harrison Ford to replace Hurt as the character. In the comics, Ross eventually becomes The Red Hulk. In the MCU, this would be an exclusively CGI charcter like Mark Ruffalo does with The Hulk.
Meaning that Ford would mostly do voice over work, that’s likely how Kevin Feige managed to convince him to play the charcter. But knowing how much creative control Harrison Ford tends to have over the characters he plays, we wouldn’t be surprised if he also forced Feige to kill Ross off at a certain point in the story.
As far as the details go, Ford will likely appears in multiple films with relatively small roles and have a more leading role to play in the Thunderbolts films slated for 2024. The Thunderbolts is an anti-hero team that is slowly coming together to complete black-ops for the United States Government inside the MCU.
Who is part of the Thunderbolts?
So far, we have several confirmed characters as part of the Thunderbolts. They include The Winter Soldier, U.S. Agent, Yelena Bolova, Barron Zemo, Abomination, Red Guardian, Taskmaster and Ghost. Harrison Ford’s Thunderbolt Ross would be the leader of this team and there is potential to possibly get Deadpool to be part of the squad now that he is also part of the MCU.