The Big Picture

Emmy-nominated Beef director Jake Schreier is jumping into the MCU by directing Thunderbolts. The Thunderbolts cast and crew includes a number of Beef alums including series creator Lee Sung Jin and star Steven Yeun. In addition to cast and crew overlap, Schreier also teases a story connection between Beef and Thunderbolts.

Emmy-nominated Beef director Jake Schreier is directing the upcoming Marvel movie, Thunderbolts. On top of that, Beef creator Lee Sung Jin was brought in to work on the script, Beef star Steven Yeun was recruited to take on a key role in the film, and Thunderbolts also has Beef’s editor Harry Yoon on board, the show’s production designer Grace Yun, and it’s art director Michael Hersey as well. Those are a lot of links between Beef and Thunderbolts, but that’s not all of them. Apparently there are some story similarities as well.

While celebrating his Emmy nomination for directing Episode 9 of Beef and his shared Outstanding Limited or Anthology Series nomination with the show’s producing team, Schreier join me for an interview that covered the making of the show, with a heavy emphasis on “The Great Fabricator,” and also a brief tease of what to expect from the MCU’s Thunderbolts.

Schreier kicked off his feature directing career with Robot & Frank and Paper Towns. From there he shifted his focus to music videos directing for Haim, Benny Blanco, and more. After that, he directed episodes of two of my favorite recent series — Beef, of course, and also Netflix’s Brand New Cherry Flavor. It’s not necessarily a filmography that screams “this guy should direct Marvel movies,” but that’s what’s most exciting about Schreier’s involvement in the franchise; he’ll hopefully infuse the long-running series with something fresh.

Image via Netflix

When asked if we’ll see any qualities of his past projects on the big screen in Thunderbolts, he pinpointed a story connection between the upcoming MCU film and Beef. Here’s how he put it:

“Obviously I can say so little, but I think it’s about characters and is there something specific to those characters that bring them together and something that they’re going through that isn’t the most traditional superhero story to be told? And I think if you can hit that and if you can make it specific – I think if you look at something like Beef what makes it what it is is that it’s so specific on so many levels. Sonny (Lee Sung Jin) brought so much of himself to it, Ali and Steven, everyone, and in being that specific, it becomes something universal. And I think that’s sort of similar to the way that we’re looking at Thunderbolts is that there is a real clear take and perspective on these characters, and there’s a specificity to it that. In the end, obviously, we want to make a big universal movie that everyone can connect to, but that you can only do that by making something that feels personal, and I think that’s what’s exciting about the project to us.”

Given the sky-high quality of Beef and the significant amount of success the series found among viewers, critics, and Emmys voters, it seems the more connections Thunderbolts has to the Netflix show, the better.

While Disney does have Thunderbolts on the calendar for a December 20, 2024 release, the project is currently at a standstill, along with many, many others, due to the ongoing WGA and SAG strikes.