Less than two months after unveiling the cast of Marvel’s First Family, Deadline reported that Emmy winner Julia Garner was cast as a female version of iconic character the Silver Surfer. The film will feature Pedro Pascal as Reed Richards/Mr. Fantastic, Vanessa Kirby as Sue Storm/Invisible Woman), Joseph Quinn as Johnny Storm/Human Torch, and and Ebon Moss-Bachrach as Ben Grimm/The Thing

Before storming into a fanboy rage due to gender swapping a comic character who was originally male in the comics, it should be noted that sources say that Julia Garner is playing Shalla-Bal, the love interest of Norrin Rad. While most continuities depict Norrin as becoming the Silver Surfer in order to spare his homeworld from Galactus, in the Earth X/Universe X alternate continuity, Shalla-Bal joined Norrin as a second Silver Surfer becoming twin heralds for the Devourer of Worlds.

This isn’t the first time Marvel Studios has gender swapped characters in adapting Marvel comic properties to film. Most notably the Eternals characters Ajak, Sprite, and Makkari were portrayed as female characters in the MCU. Likewise filmmaker James Gunn had Cosmo the dog as female explaining, “Because Cosmo is based on Laika, the Russian dog, who was a female, so I gender-swapped her back.”

Nevertheless Garner’s casting will undoubtedly garner the familiar criticism from the usual comic book purists. But what I found most amusing is that the news has generated renewed interest of a clip from Ozark featuring Garner’s character Ruth Langmore screaming, ” If you wanna stop me, you’re gonna have to fucking kill me.”

 

Matt Shakman is directing Fantastic Four off a script by Josh Friedman, Jeff Kaplan, Eric Pearson and Ian Springer. Production will begin this summer, and the film is set to bow on July 25, 2025.

 

 

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