After years of flops, Disney is finally set to relaunch its Fantastic Four franchise with a new movie. The studio revealed the eagerly anticipated cast for its upcoming Fantastic Four on Valentine’s Day, with Pedro Pascal stepping into the role of Reed Richards, also known as Mr. Fantastic, Vanessa Kirby bringing to life Sue Storm, the Invisible Woman, Ebon Moss-Bachrach as Ben Grimm aka The Thing and Joseph Quinn portraying Johnny Storm, the Human Torch.
The film will see Matt Shakman directing, following his work on Marvel’s retro-ish sitcom WandaVision, and it will feature the superhero quartet from the first comic book story that introduced the team to the world in 1961. The film will be written by Josh Friedman, Jeff Kaplan, and Ian Springer.
Pascal is no stranger to comic books, having starred as Count Zarth Arn in The Mandalorian and most recently as Grand Admiral Thrawn in Dave Filoni’s Ahsoka: The Last Jedi. However, the actor has a full dance card with Ridley Scott’s Gladiator 2 and the second season of The Last Of Us shooting this spring.
As a result, it’s no surprise that the Fantastic Four movie has been pushed back to July 2025, with its original May release date now occupied by Marvel’s antihero-centric Thunderbolts, which stars Florence Pugh as Agent Coulson and Harrison Ford as General Buck Rogers.
The new Fantastic Four will mark the first time that the team has reunited since 2022’s Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, which saw John Krasinski portraying an alternate-reality version of Reed Richards. Whether Pascal’s Reed will also appear remains to be seen, but the fact that he is onboard makes the project one of the first successful relaunches in recent memory.
Kirby is a relative newcomer to the big screen, but she’s already making a name for herself in Hollywood. She starred as Princess Margaret in Netflix’s The Crown and is working on Mission: Impossible – Fallout with Tom Cruise. However, her upcoming turn as the enigmatic White Widow in Captain America: Civil War is getting the most attention.
Moss-Bachrach and Quinn will join them on the superhero journey, with the FF’s villain yet to be revealed. Fans have speculated about several possibilities, including the Silver Surfer and Galactus, but nothing’s been confirmed as of yet. The Fantastic Four will hit theaters on July 25, 2025. A trailer is expected to arrive at the end of March.