Sebastian Stan, who plays Bucky Barnes/the Winter Soldier in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, has revealed he pitched Marvel boss Kevin Feige a low-budget, "Sicario-esque" thriller centred on his character, in a New York Magazine interview. The suggestion comes as Marvel enjoys a box-office resurgence, with Spider-Man: Brand New Day passing $2.4bn and Avengers: Doomsday already racking up huge US presales, following a weak 2025 in which Captain America: Brave New World, Thunderbolts* and The Fantastic Four: First Steps all underperformed relative to expectations.

The Guardian's commentary argues Stan's idea points to a wider fix for superhero fatigue: giving secondary characters smaller, genre-driven films rather than folding them into ever-bigger multiversal blockbusters. It suggests other underused Marvel figures, such as Ghost, Red Guardian and Wong, could similarly headline modest heist, spy-comedy or occult-detective films, citing Logan and Joker (which together grossed almost $1.7bn) as proof that stripped-back, genre-inflected superhero stories can succeed both critically and commercially.