• Marvel announced the cast for its latest run at making a good Fantastic Four movie.
• The cast includes Pedro Pascal, Ebon Moss-Bachrach, Vanessa Kirby and Joseph Quinn as the Human Torch.
• The film is set for release on 25th July 2025.

Before Iron Man and the Avengers arrived to ignite interest in superhero movies, the genre wasn’t nearly as big as it is today. While Marvel had some good movies, there was more bad than good in the before times. One property that landed in the bad column was the Fantastic Four.

We have had a grand total of four Fantastic Four movies since the 90s, the first of which was never officially released and now we’re getting a fifth film.

On Wednesday this week for Valentine’s Day, Marvel Entertainment announced that The Fantastic Four would arrive in theaters on 25th July 2025.

As mentioned in the X post above, Pedro Pascal will take on the role of Reed Richards / Mister Fantastic, Vanessa Kirby will play Susan Storm / The Invisible Woman, Ebon Moss-Bachrach will play Ben Grimm / The Thing and Joseph Quinn will play Johnny Storm / The Human Torch.

And that is all Marvel has shared. It’s not clear how Marvel is going to loop The Fantastic Four into its universe. We did see Reed Richards in Doctor Strange: Multiverse of Madness but the character’s appearance was fan service at best.

Rumours that Pascal had been given the role of Mister Fantastic began spreading in late 2023 and while those have now been proven to be accurate, there hasn’t been so much as a whisper about the script, villain or much else as regards Fantastic Four.

The announcement of Joseph Quinn as Johnny Storm comes after a breakout performance as Eddie Munson in Netflix’s Stranger Things. The actor is also set to appear in the sequel to Gladiator scheduled to release in November.

Ebon Moss-Bachrach is the perfect casting for The Thing especially given the character’s broody, depressed nature. Also, having recently won an Emmy, this Fantastic Four boasts some unbelievable star power.

And we haven’t even mentioned Vanessa Kirby yet who most recently played Josephine Bonaparte in Napoleon and Princess Margaret in The Crown. You may also recognise the actress from several Mission Impossible films.

Despite all this star power, The Fantastic Four is something of a cursed property. As mentioned four films have been made about this quartet that gets exposed to cosmic rays in space.

As mentioned, a film was made in 1994, but was never officially released. Hollywood tried again in 2005 with a cast starring Ioan Gruffudd, Jessica Alba, Chris Evans, Michael Chiklis, and Julian McMahon as Doctor Doom.

These five would join up again for 2007’s Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer.

Finally, we had the 2015 reboot of the franchise with FANT4STIC starring Miles Teller, Michael B. Jordan, Kate Mara, Jamie Bell and Toby Kebbell. This was by all metrics a failure of a movie.

“It’s been a while since we’ve seen a movie fail on so many fronts. We’re sure those more knowledgeable of the comics will find an entire new list of problems separate to our own, but we try to judge a movie on its own merits and in this instance, the Fantastic Four is found wanting,” we said in our review all those years ago.

Can a screenplay from Josh Friedman, Jeff Kaplan and Ian Springer directed by Matt Shakman reverse the curse of the Fantastic Four? We guess we’ll find out in July 2025.