Written by Edwin Francisco
New details have emerged regarding Marvel Studios’ reboot of The Fantastic Four.
First of all, WandaVision’s Matt Shakman will direct The Fantastic Four. Although there’s no official statement of Shakman’s signing, sources revealed that D23 will announce it. The D23 Expo takes place from September 9-11. Many expect Marvel Studios drop other world-shattering news that day
Marvel Studios initially selected Spider-Man: No Way Home‘s Jon Watts to helm The Fantastic Four. However, Watts left in April. Instead, Watts jumped to Lucasfilm to executive produce the Star Wars: Skeleton Crew series for Disney Plus.
The Fantastic Four collected its share of rumored filmmakers. Everyone from John Krasinski to Steven Spielberg fell into the list. Of them all, Shakman is perhaps the most intriguing. Shakman’s visionary touch on WandaVision busted conventions. The Fantastic Four requires a fresh approach.
Thus, Shakman leaves the troubled Star Trek 4.
The Fantastic Four: New Details Emerge On Marvel Studios’ Reboot
Image: Matt Shakman
The crew of the Enterprise in the Kelvin timeline supposedly returns. Negotiations of the cast’s contracts could have contributed to the delay. Not to mention that one of the main cast, Anton Yelchin, who played Pavel Chekov, passed away. Supposedly, Chris Hemsworth returns as George Kirk in the new movie. The one who acted as Captain and sacrificed himself to save the crew of the U.S.S. Kelvin. Paramount has talked with a number of directors to do the film, namely Quentin Tarantino, S.J. Clarkson, and Noah Hawley.
Shakman landed the job.
The Hollywood Reporter said that Shackman left Star Trek 4 because of scheduling conflicts. Paramount Pictures said in a statement:
Matt Shakman is an incredibly talented filmmaker, and we regret the timing didn’t align for him to direct our upcoming Star Trek film. We are grateful for his many contributions, are excited about the creative vision of this next chapter and look forward to bringing it to audiences all around world.
One bad news can be good news for another.
It turns out that the schedule conflicted with the production of The Fantastic Four. Star Trek 4 has its release on December 22, 2023, while The Fantastic Four is on November 8, 2024. Star Trek’s production is still on a crawl, and Marvel Studios movie factory is ongoing. Even with Star Trek’s recent loss of the director, Paramount is still moving forward with its current release date. Paramount is now looking for a new director. Paramount considers Star Trek 4 as top priority.
But for comic book fans, they know Shakman to have done work on The Boys and the entire series of WandaVision.
The Fantastic Four: New Details Emerge On Marvel Studios’ Reboot
Image: 20th Century
Shakman won’t create another origin story for The Fantastic Four. We’ve seen it a couple of times already in 2005 with Ioan Gruffudd, Jessica Alba, Chris Evans, and Michael Chiklis. And in the 2015 reboot with Miles Teller, Michael B. Jordan, Kate Mara and Jamie Bell. While the 2005 version was very close to the comic book version, the 2015 version had its own twist. Kevin Feige said during SDCC:
A lot of people know this origin story. A lot of people know the basics. How do we take that and bring something that they’ve never seen before? We’ve set a very high bar for ourselves with bringing that to the screen.
Marvel Studios has done this before, so it’s not a surprise. Characters that had previous films even before the MCU skipped their origins. Spider-Man and the Hulk skipped their origin stories. So, the Fantastic Four can just get to the point and focus on the characters and story, not on how they got their powers.
Marvel Studios knows how Shakman works and he already has proven himself with making WandaVision. He has shown that he is versatile with style and can still make the show feel like a Marvel Studios movie. The Fantastic Four will be Shakman’s first feature film.