You have to kinda wonder why it took this long to make it official. Rumors have been swirling around Marvel’s Fantastic Four for months and months, and back in November, it seemed all but certain that Pedro Pascal would be suiting up as Reed Richards before much longer.
And he is! And so is everyone else who was strongly rumored to be playing Marvel’s First Family. Vanessa Kirby is Sue Storm/the Invisible Woman; Joseph Quinn is Johnny Storm/the Human Torch; and Ebon Moss-Bachrach is Ben Grimm/the Thing.
It’s a solid lineup, if you choose to ignore the fact that Reed and Sue are generally a couple, and Pascal is 13 years older than Kirby, which plays into a thousand cliches about how Hollywood casts men and women differently as they age—and how Marvel continues to have a notable issue casting women over 40 (or letting their characters live).
Pascal, of course, is the Mandalorian, and Joel in The Last of Us (pictured above), and once upon a time got his head squished like a grape on Game of Thrones. Kirby’s most visible role might be in the latest Missions: Impossible, but she has also been in The Crown and Napoleon, and once upon a time was fantastic in a stage production of A Streetcar Named Desire that also starred Gillian Anderson and Ben Foster. (It was intense.)
Quinn is mostly known for his be-mulleted Stranger Things character, though he has also done a lot of British television work (and had a tiny role on Game of Thrones) and co-stars in the upcoming, unnecessary Quiet Place prequel. Moss-Bachrach often plays a guy one loves to hate; he played Marnie’s terrible boyfriend on Girls, a creep on Andor, and now yells in the kitchen on The Bear. (And he was on The Punisher and Nos4A2.)
The Fantastic Four movie will be directed by Matt Shakman (WandaVision) and has a screenply by Josh Friedman, Jeff Kaplan and Ian Springer. Friedman’s name has been turning up in a ton of SFF movie and TV news lately (he co-created Foundation and co-developed the Snowpiercer series), which is quite interesting if, say, you’ve been intrigued by his work since the untimely demise of The Sarah Connor Chronicles.
Now that the film’s primary cast (sans Doctor Doom, anyway) is set, Marvel has moved the release date, swapping Fantastic Four and for Thunderbolts. Fantastic Four will arrive in theaters July 25, 2025, with Thunderbolts taking the movie’s previous date, May 2, 2025.
