The MCU has thrived for so long because it told compelling stories that blend the superhero template with diverse movie genres, ensuring each installment is aesthetically and tonally distinct from the others. Ant-Man was a heist film, Guardians of the Galaxy was a sci-fi space opera, and Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness was supernatural horror, and that’s but a small sample of the franchise’s legacy in modern cinema. If Sebastian Stan had his way, we would have also had a neo-Western follow-up to Captain America: The Winter Soldier.
Bucky Barnes is arguably one of the MCU’s most underutilized characters, often relegated to sharing the spotlight in two-handers like The Falcon and the Winter Soldier or ensemble films like Thunderbolts. His tragic arc was never fully explored after Captain America: The Winter Soldier, which is a shame because that would have made for a gripping story of loss and redemption. It turns out that Stan has already pitched a standalone Bucky Barnes movie to Marvel boss Kevin Feige, and the latter was open to the idea.
Speaking with Vulture, Stan said he half-jokingly pitched a Bucky film à la Taylor Sheridan’s Sicario, a gritty neo-Western about the modern-day American frontier set in the lawless landscapes along the US-Mexico border. Directed by Denis Villeneuve, the film was also Sheridan’s first foray into the genre as a screenwriter, long before he became a TV powerhouse.
“We keep a real small budget. It’s about a guy who thinks he recognizes someone from his past that had something to do with when, you know, he was brainwashed, and he gets obsessed with this person. He goes on a whole journey to try to figure out who this person is. It’s a thriller.”
Whether Stan’s dream project, which instantly reminds of action thrillers The Terminal List and Lioness, will ever see the light of day is anyone’s guess. A solo Bucky Barnes film based on Stan’s pitch would be the perfect spin-off to Captain America: The Winter Soldier, but that storyline is long overdue. The MCU is shifting gears with Avengers: Doomsday and Secret Wars, which are expected to wipe the slate clean for the Mutant Saga, and Marvel has yet to confirm which of the current generation of superheroes will carry over into this new era. With the studio releasing fewer films than in previous phases, Stan has his work cut out for him if he hopes to get his project greenlit.
Bucky is locked in for Doomsday at the very least, and he could also return in Secret Wars. However, there is a tight window between those films where a solo Bucky Barnes movie could fit — especially if the character is killed off in Doomsday. The MCU pulled a similar stunt with Black Widow, which served as a post-mortem epilogue for Natasha Romanoff after Avengers: Endgame. Small-scale stories like Echo, Daredevil, and Hawkeye also keep the sprawling franchise diverse with equal measures of grounded grit and blockbuster spectacle.
