The Fantastic Four: First Steps was revealed as the official title of the Marvel Studios pic during an action-packed Hall H Comic-Con panel on Saturday.
Director Matt Shakman made the reveal after previewing an early teaser reel, then surprising the audience with the introduction of cast members Pedro Pascal, Vanessa Kirby, Joseph Quinn and Ebon Moss-Bachrach. Initially, he’d said the gang wouldn’t be making it, with production due to kick off in the UK on Monday.
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Revealed during the panel was the fact that our core Fantastic Four cast members will feature in the next two Avengers movies. The teaser reel featured an early look at our four core cast members in astronaut outfits, the liftoff of an epic spacecraft, and one last stunning shot of the enormous supervillain Galactus hovering over the Earth.
Pascal said what he’s most enjoyed about joining the MCU is a sense of “new family.” The actor shared how he and Shakman had the same manager and were once near-roommates, though the filmmaker was turned off by the place.
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Moss-Bachrach said he was still processing putting on the superhero suit of Ben Grimm aka The Thing. “I got a nice text message from Mark Ruffalo. It just demystified the process of motion capture,” he said. The advice? “Make scenes like normal scene work.”
The panel didn’t go on too long, Feige said, as the cast “literally have to fly back [to the UK], but they have their own fantastic car which will hopefully take them back to UK quickly.” In a magical moment as he said this, an enormous blue space car floated onto the stage.
While the Fantastic Four pic’s plot has thus far been kept under wraps, Pascal plays Reed Richards (aka Mr. Fantastic), with Kirby as Sue Storm (aka the Invisible Woman), Quinn as Johnny Storm (aka the Human Torch) and Moss-Bachrach as Ben Grimm (aka the Thing). Paul Walter Hauser and Natasha Lyonne are on board in undisclosed roles, with Julia Garner set to play Shalla-Bal, a version of Silver Surfer, and Ralph Ineson to play big bad Galactus.
In a recent appearance on The Official Marvel Podcast, Marvel chief Kevin Feige called the project “a period film” and shared that filming will commence on the Monday after Comic-Con, July 29.
“I’m extremely excited because those characters are mainstays, are legendary pillars of the Marvel Universe that we’ve never gotten to play with or explore in any significant way apart from [Doctor Strange in the] Multiverse of Madness and a few fun teases before, in the way we’re doing that film,” said Feige. “So, I’m extremely excited.”
WandaVision‘s Shakman is directing The Fantastic Four: First Steps from a script by Eric Pearson, Josh Friedman, Jeff Kaplan, and Ian Springer. Peter Cameron (WandaVision) has also done some writing on the project, produced by Feige for Marvel Studios, which is slated to hit theaters on July 25, 2025.
Today’s Marvel news comes at a time when the studio has begun recalibrating, lifting the pressure to produce as much content as possible with a new mandate of two films per year. Already past the release of Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania, Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 and The Marvels, with Deadpool & Wolverine currently in theaters, the studio now has Captain America: Brave New World (February 14, 2025) and Thunderbolts* (May 5, 2025) coming up to wrap up Phase 5 of the MCU.
Opening with The Fantastic Four, Phase Six will also feature Blade (November 7, 2025), Avengers 5 (May 1, 2026), and Avengers: Secret Wars (May 7, 2027).
This year’s edition of San Diego Comic-Con runs through Sunday, July 28.
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