Posted in: Movies, Netflix, Opinion, streaming, TV, TV | Tagged: david harbour, Marvel Studios, netflix, stranger things, thunderbolts

Stranger Things 5: "Thunderbolts" Move Good News for David Harbour?

Was Marvel Studios moving Marvel's Thunderbolts from 2024 to 2025 a good thing filming-wise for David Harbour - and Stranger Things fans?

"Yeah, next year is going to be a very tough year for me schedule-wise," revealed David Harbour during an interview with Collider back in November 2022. Of course, what he was talking about was how he was going to juggle reprising his role as Red Guardian for Marvel Studios' Marvel's Thunderbolts film and returning as Jim Hopper for the fifth & final season of Ross Duffer & Matt Duffer's Stranger Things (or "Stranger Things 5"). But that was a year ago – and a lot has happened across the film & television landscape since that time. One major event was the once-in-a-lifetime strikes by SAG-AFTRA & WGA happening at the same time, grinding film & television productions to a halt for a number of months this year (with SAG-AFTRA's strike coming to an end this week). While it's great to see production wheels beginning to turn again, there are also some major changes happening production schedule-wise – with one that was announced today possibly being a silver lining for Harbour when it comes to filming Stranger Things 5.

Earlier today, we learned that Marvel Studios was shifting the premiere dates on a number of films to 2025 – with Marvel's Thunderbolts moving from December 20, 2024, to July 25, 2025. Now, assuming this isn't going to be an instance where Marvel Studios sits on the completed film for months, it seems that Harbour could wrap filming the Netflix series before heading back to the MCU. We know that the Stranger Things writers are back & hard at work and that sets & other facilities for the fifth season were already being built. If the rumblings are true that Netflix is giving the series its top priority, Harbour might be able to luck out with – at worst – a little overlap at the end or with some post-production work.

"It's going to have to be a back-and-forth with me. They're going to have to sort of share me. And so it is kind of like, I don't know exactly how they're working it, but it's a week on, week off, two weeks on, two weeks off, something like that where I would go back and forth," Harbours added during his 2022 interview when first projecting ahead to what his work life might look like in 2023. "They both are being shot in Atlanta. That may have also been structured in a certain way, but yes, it is helpful. So I can just literally shoot a scene in 'Stranger Things' and get in my car and run over to the Marvel scene to shoot a scene there, maybe."

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