Happy Valentine’s Day. It’s a holiday for love, friendship, and also apparently a holiday for major superhero movie franchises to announce their long-awaited official casts! (IDK, I don’t make the rules, I just report on them.)
After what has felt like a sweet eternity, Marvel Studios took to X this morning to announce their official cast for the highly-anticipated Fantastic Four reboot.
The ever-flexible Mr. Fantastic will be played by the internet’s favorite daddy, Pedro Pascal; the invisible woman will be played by action-genre darling, Vanessa Kirby; the hulking Thing will be ready for clobberin’ time with Ebon Moss-Bachrach taking on the role; and rounding out the cast is beloved Stranger Things star Joseph Quinn as The Human Torch.
These are obviously not the first actors to portray the famous fantastic family, with a camp-tastic version of the comic series produced in 1994 and a more well-known version starring a pre-Captain America Chris Evans was produced in 2005. Then, most recently, there was an attempt to revive the franchise in 2015 which, uh…let’s go with “didn’t go well.”
As mentioned above, the cast for the official Marvel Studios version has been long speculated about, with fans online often going to bat for who they believed should take on the iconic roles. Infamously, many fans cast John Krasinski in the role of Mr. Fantastic, which even led to a very meta-casting decision in Doctor Strange and the Multiverse of Madness wherein John took on the role in a fun cameo, but has obviously not joined the cast in a full-time capacity given Pedro’s involvement.
Apart from the actors, those behind-the-scenes will be equally impressive, with WandaVision director Matt Shakman behind the camera—which certainly accounts for the interesting late ’50s/early ’60s aesthetic of the announcement. He’ll be working with a script written by Jeff Kaplan and Ian Springer, as well as Josh Friedman.
The casting announcement also came with an official release date: July 25, 2025:
The date is interesting because—as one fan on X pointed out—this means Fantastic Four has swapped release dates with Thunderbolts, another highly-anticipated upcoming Marvel film:
Naturally, fans of the franchise were quick to take to X to express their feelings on the massive announcement, sharing their thoughts and excitement:
We can all breathe a sigh of relief knowing we’re free of the nonstop Fantastic Four casting rumors for now. Though, we are still waiting to hear who’s playing the iconic villain, Doctor Doom…
