Marvel Fantastic Four cast announced with Pedro Pascal, Vanessa Kirby
Marvel Studios announced its lead actors for its re-re-reboot of “The Fantastic Four” on Wednesday, tapping a cast of widely beloved stars as the Disney-owned company tries to recapture the 2005 film’s box office magic.
End of carouselPedro Pascal — know for his TV roles in pop-culture darlings “The Mandalorian and “The Last of Us” — will play “Mr. Fantastic” Reed Richards, a super-genius with the ability to stretch and bend his body.
Vanessa Kirby, who starred in “The Crown” and “Pieces of a Woman,” will play Richards’ wife, “the Invisible Woman” Sue Storm. Her brother, “the Human Torch” Johnny Storm, will be played by Joseph Quinn, who was widely adored for his role as Eddie Munson in “Stranger Things.” Ebon Moss-Bachrach — who won an Emmy for his role as Cousin Richie in FX’s “The Bear” — will take on the role of Ben Grimm, also known as The Thing.
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The ensemble will be starring in the fourth major movie about the Fantastic Four, who debuted in a 1961 in comic series and are popularly known as “Marvel’s first family.”
Rights to the franchise belonged to 20th Century Studios when it released “Fantastic Four” in 2005 and its 2007 sequel, “Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer.” The two films, which both starred Jessica Alba and a pre-Captain America Chris Evans, earned more than $630 million at the global box office.
In 2015, Fox rebooted the franchise with another “Fantastic Four,” which starred Kate Mara, Miles Teller and Michael B. Jordan. The film was critically panned and scraped only about $168 million worldwide. Plans for a sequel were dropped.
There’s also an unreleased 1994 film about the team that exists on YouTube, but that’s another story.
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This “Fantastic Four” film will be the first since Disney obtained the rights to Fox properties in 2019. “Deadpool & Wolverine,” which had a record-breaking Super Bowl trailer on Sunday, is also an upcoming Marvel film based around characters that were originally under the 20th Century Studios banner.
The casting announcement puts an end to what’s been a years-long saga of rumors about who will star in “Fantastic Four” since the film was first teased in 2019. Marvel rumor websites and blogs speculated that actors such as Adam Driver or Mila Kunis would lead the film (one especially viral version of the rumor had it that Kunis would play the Thing, a scaly bald rock monster).
Though Marvel declined to answer questions about the new film’s storyline, the casting announcement came with a ’60s style poster of the Four lounging around a living room, which led many fans to wonder if the film will take place in that era. The poster also includes a small robot named “H.E.R.B.I.E.,” (no relation to this reporter) who in comic lore is known to search for the planet-eating villain Galactus.
“The Fantastic Four” is scheduled to hit theaters on July 25, 2025.
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