The Great Sundering, aka Fox’s Marvel movie line, has announced the cast for their Fantastic Four reboot, to be directed by Josh Trank and scheduled for June 2015. And they are…..
Miles Teller (Whiplash) as Reed Richards!
Kate Mara (House of Cards) as Sue Storm!
Michael B. Jordan (Fruitvale Station) as Johnny Storm!
And Jamie Bell as Ben Grimm!
Yes the sylph-like dancer Billy Elliot will play the rockbound Thing! It will make his change to orange rocks even more tragic.
According to THR, the unconventional casting came about “after initial tests failed to produce a candidate execs could agree on.”
It’s all CGI anyway so.
Jordan’s casting as blue eyed blonde Johnny Storm, had been kicked around for a while, and makes a nice counterpoint to Jessica Alba playing Sue Storm in the last version of the FF.
THR is bullish on this youthful, critically admired cast:
The new cast may not be household names or A-listers but in terms of a next gen “best of” class it can’t be beat. Teller is on the rise and fielding multiple offers, Jordan is nominated for an Indie Spirit for his acclaimed work in Fruitvale Station, and Mara has cachet due to co-starring in House of Cards. Brit thespian Bell is one of the stars of Lars von Trier’s Nymphomaniac.
The new FF movie has been in script hell for awhile, but a new movie has to be made eventually or Disney/Marvel will get the franchise back. Let’s hope it’s less of a kiddie movie than the last version—although I loved the Chris Evans/Michael Chiklis chemistry of the last go round. This one will be based on the Ultimate FF book, hence the more youthful feeling.
I’ll be hard for me to get used to a young Reed and Ben Grimm, as their age was always an interesting part of the dynamic.
Ah, those Hollywood execs… they’re so funny.
It’s not the Fantastic Four we all know, just some kids with their names.
Astro City’s Family team bears more resemblance to F4 than this team.
It will make enough money to keep making films in order to keep the IP from reverting back to Marvel.
Nothing to see here, move along…
If it was a film about the FF being replaced by a gang of impostors…
Great truth in advertising if they named it PCFF. The Politically Correct Fantastic Four, everyone!
Lets face it, we are not the target audience for this. Correct?
Well better this route than stricter conformance to the source. They could’ve played the origin story yet again, with Reed and Sue being childhood neighbors when Sue at 8 had a crush on 18 yr old Reed.
Go with Woody Allen in the starring role.
Silly but True
@jimmy – yeah, you’re correct. if it’s the youth market being targeted, nope, no one over thirty-five need apply. kiddie movie indeed. I would even say that comic book fans of the F.F. are not the targeted audience either. maybe one day, if we’re all lucky, the movie rights of the F.F. will revert back to marvel and we’ll see an F.F. movie done right.
You know the savvy marketing scheme by Disney/Marvel of tie-ing the movies together and dropping easter eggs and hints as to an ongoing, overarching universal continuity that everyone’s been following and even getting them to endure a, perhaps improving, but generally abysmal SHIELD TV show?
And of course there’s Spider-Man and X-Men who stand outside of that and still make it work but FF is no Spidey or X-Men. And X-Men and Spider-Man have stayed largely faithful enough that fanpeople can squint and No-Prize the non-studio connections.
This’ll be an interesting experiment to see if the audience is still just in it for the capes&tights (or LOLseys, the acting pedigree?) or if they want the feel of the interconnectedness and faithfulness to the source material that’s been a mark of the successful adaptations thus far.
Probably ill-advised to try and do it with FF, which is historically a tough sell so I’m guessing this might be the one that under-performs leading media outlets to begin the (always premature but probably prescient nonetheless) questions about attrition of audience interest in the superhero genre movie.
I’ve been trying to articulate a response to this. Here goes.
If it was only the casting of Johnny Storm that seemed questionable then maybe one could look forward to seeing how the film makers handle the change to the character’s race. It cannot be ignored as with Thor’s Heimdall, given that his sister Sue is still white. If done well it could be really interesting and a satisfying way to explain the character’s drive (extremely accomplished pilot at a very young age) and near constant need for attention. However, that is a very large “if”.
The casting of Reed Richards and Ben Grimm while devoid of race issues also raise question marks. Neither actor projects (to me at least) the qualities their characters are known for. I don’t think Michael B. Jordan would have any problem delivering the personality of Johnny Storm—he just doesn’t look like him. Miles Teller and Jamie Bell on the other hand might have the correct skin color but everything else seems a mis-match.
The casting for this movie indicates that this version of the FF may be such a large departure from the source material that fans of the comics and cartoons may be less than excited for its arrival.
The thing hasn’t even been filmed yet; I’m not about to shit on something that has yet to even happen.
I don’t care what anyone says. Betty White is going to kick so much ass in this movie as Doctor Doom!
The Johnny Storm casting doesn’t make any sense since he and Sue are supposed to be blood related. Would have been better if they went all the way and hired a black actress for Sue too.
But forget casting. I’m personally of the belief that the Fantastic Four in any form, comic/film/whatever, doesn’t really work in 2014. The characters and concepts are strongly rooted in the 1960s and, like Doc Savage/The Shadow/etc for the pulp era, stop working once you take them out of WHEN they are supposed to be.
It clearly states that this is based on Ultimate Fantastic Four. If you don’t like Ultimate Fantastic Four, then you aren’t going to like this.
And any statement that begins with “This doesn’t make any sense because in the comics…” clearly comes from someone who hasn’t been paying attention to how Hollywood makes super-hero comics adaptations.
People with different skin colors can be related.
FACT.
“The characters and concepts are strongly rooted in the 1960s …”
I was hoping for this with the Spider-Man movies. Just as the Batman film of 1989 was modern, but retained the art-deco look of the 1940s, I was hoping for a Spider-Man film (or animated series) that would suggest the 1960s and the present. Sam Raimi does it a few times, in the movies, but only a few times. A Fantastic Four movie with a strong 1960s look and vibe would be — fantastic.
Rich HArvey which Raimi-man movies did you see. They were totally Steve Ditko inspired when Avi would let Raimi get away with it.
I’ll be sure to tell my two nieces who are sisters – one who is Puerto Rican/White with “white” skin and the other who is Puerto Rican/African American with much darker skin – that it would be “better” (to use someone else’s word) if they had the same skin color.
Geez-us. People don’t get out much do they? Open your eyes to the real world. It’s not all vanilla.
So let me get this straight… Gadot is cast as Wonder Woman and the Internet can’t even think straight. But Jamie Bell is cast as The Thing and… it’s not that big a deal because it’s CGI anyway.
Who cares if the actors “seem” to be good fits? They’re frigging actors. If the material is there, they’ll perform as the characters. If the material isn’t there, the movie will be shit, regardless of whether it was Miles Teller or Adrian Brody playing Reed.
If this movie is just being made to hold onto the rights, then I totally expect it to be crap. Look at the new Spider-man movies. They’re awful rush-to-the-screen bombs. I don’t care how much money they make. They’re bad and so, unfortunately, is this.
Jimmie, TRUE women are aways more scrutinized, but The Thing will be CGI. Wonder Woman will be a woman (mostly) in a skintight suit. Big diff.
It’ll probabally be really good. I’m all for new ideas.
Heidi, I agree. You’re right that it’s not an apples-to-apples comparison, but then… the *entire* cast of the FF movie is off here. Gadot, in my opinion, will be just fine and CGI will still come to her aid whenever she picks up a car or throws someone through a building. The *magic* will happen on the screen in some form or fashion.
It’s just the scrutiny of Gadot was mind boggling. Women do have to worse than men for a variety of reasons.
If Fox REALLY wanted to be progressive, they’d make the entire cast black.
Denzel Washington as Reed Richards
Rhianna as Sue Storm
Michael B. Jordan as Johnny Storm
Vin Diesel (in rubber costume!) as Ben Grimm
Well that’s save me the cost of a movie ticket.
How comes diversity seems to always mean black. What about hispanics, indians , asians etc They make up for more of the worlds population.
It’s getting like every program looks the same. You know main lead white, one woman lead, one black lead, one hispanic is lesser role(preferbably female to keep the gender balance).
If they really wanna shove diversity down our throats how about a bit of courage an have an all black cast or half indian/asian cast .
The only surprising thing about this is no wheelchair character( for some reason disabled people always have to be represented by someone in a wheelchair)
Who says Jordan’s involvement has anything to do with a desire for diversity? It’s hollywood, it’s about money. Jordan’s an actor on the rise who they thought would help put butts in seats and wouldn’t cost much.
Get Milla Jovavich as Dr. Doom and I’m sold.
But seriously, Kate Mara is a better actor than Jessica Alba so this can’t possibly be worse than the last two movies.
Lighten up, guys. They’re making a comic book movie here, not remaking Citizen Kane!
Holy jumpin’ jehosaphat! The Human Torch isn’t black! He’s orange and yellow! And on fire and stuff!
And the Thing is made of rocks and the Invisible Woman is nothing colored! What’s this world coming to?
Or else it’s those cosmic rays that turned him black. All they gave me was a brain tumor.
I’m opposed to it.
On general principles, I’m opposed to it.
It’s disingenuous to call fanboys racist, they don’t like when costumes and origins are changed let alone some characters’ race. I would be very surprised if most marvel fanboys weren’t wetting their pants over a live action Luke Cage or Black Panther.
I’m a little confused by this article. You throw away a mention that this is all CGI yet do not clarify whether these actors are being hired for their voices or faces. If they are indeed only “voice-acting” I don’t see the need to compare the visuals of the actors to their roles. Seems like an underdeveloped story that already suffers from click-bait controversy.
Jamie Bell did the mo-cap for TINTIN, which was fantastic. I’m guessing that was the idea there.
Jimmy P. said: “Lets face it, we are not the target audience for this. Correct?”
Correct. They’re going for the TWILIGHT audience, as with the Spider-Man reboot. If you’re over 30, you don’t exist.
But artists have been drawing Sue/Invisible Woman to look younger and younger (and curvier and curvier) over the last 20 years. She looks like a teenager now. As Kirby drew her in the ’60s, she appeared to be in her early 30s.
I thought the earliest drawings of Sue skewed young, which may be why later continuities claimed/hinted that though Reed was old enough to be in WWII, Sue had been his junior by at least ten years. Back then, I thought she and Johnny looked of an age. By the middle 60s, though, Kirby was drawing all the characters a little more ‘settled’ looking IMO.
The reboot would have been better received if Fox went with the all female FF, or the FF in Japan.
A 10-year age difference between Reed and Sue sounds right to me. As a WWII veteran, he would probably have been in his 40s during the 1960s (as were most real-life WWII vets, most of whom were born in the early 1920s). Sue, if a decade younger, would have been in her 30s.
Of course, thanks to “Marvel time,” there characters are obviously not in their 80s and 90s today!
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