With Marvel Studios looking to staff up the MCU’s first appearance of “Marvel’s First Family,” the Fantastic Four, Variety says Pedro Pascal is high on the list to play the team’s leader: Reed Richards aka Mr. Fantastic.
The trade reports the studio is eyeing The Mandalorian star to play the character, canonically among the smartest men in the Marvel Comics universe, who gains the ability to stretch his body at will.
John Krasinski played an alternate version of the character in Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, a clever nod to online fans casting him — and his wife, Emily Blunt, as Sue Storm, Reed’s wife aka The Invisible Girl.
Created in 1961 by Jack Kirby and Stan Lee, the superhero team forms after they’re accidentally exposed to gamma rays, giving them different powers: Sue can create force fields and vanish; her daredevil brother Johnny can set himself on fire and fly as the Human Torch, and Reed’s pal Ben Grimm’s body becomes the hulking hero known as Thing.
Marvel Studios acquired the rights to the characters after parent company Disney’s acquisition of 20th Century Fox in 2019.
Fox released Fantastic Four in 2005 and its 2007 sequel, Fantastic Four: The Rise of the Silver Surfer, which both see Ioan Gruffudd as Richards, Jessica Alba as Sue, Michael Chiklis as Grimm and Chris Evans — who later became Marvel Studios’ Captain America — as Johnny.
A widely-panned 2015 reboot saw Miles Teller as Reed, Kate Mara as Sue, Jamie Bell as Thing and Michael B. Jordan, later the star of the Black Panther films, as Johnny.
Marvel Studios’ Fantastic Four, directed by WandaVision director Matt Shakman, is scheduled to open May 2, 2025.
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