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Watch the 'Crafting Fantastic Four' Featurette for The Fantastic Four: First Steps, the next installment to the MCU and introduction to Marvel's First Family. Join key individuals part of the development of the film from Director Matt Shakman, Executive Producer Tim Lewis, and the cast on what it was like to create a Fantastic Four film that not only calls back to the optimistic era of the 1960s, but a great keystone of the modern era. The Fantastic Four: First Steps is in theaters on July 25.

The Fantastic Four: First Steps stars Pedro Pascal, Vanessa Kirby, Joseph Quinn, Ebon Moss-Bachrach, Ralph Ineson, and Julia Garner. The Fantastic Four: First Steps opens in theaters on July 25, 2025.

Set against the vibrant backdrop of a 1960s-inspired, retro- futuristic world, Marvel Studios’ The Fantastic Four: First Steps introduces Marvel’s First Family—Reed Richards/Mister Fantastic (Pedro Pascal), Sue Storm/Invisible Woman (Vanessa Kirby), Johnny Storm/Human Torch (Joseph Quinn) and Ben Grimm/The Thing (Ebon Moss-Bachrach) as they face their most daunting challenge yet. Forced to balance their roles as heroes with the strength of their family bond, they must defend Earth from a ravenous space god called Galactus (Ralph Ineson) and his enigmatic Herald, Silver Surfer (Julia Garner). And if Galactus’ plan to devour the entire planet and everyone on it weren’t bad enough, it suddenly gets very personal.

The action adventure also stars Paul Walter Hauser, John Malkovich, Natasha Lyonne and Sarah Niles. The Fantastic Four: First Steps is directed by Matt Shakman, produced by Kevin Feige and executive produced by Louis D’Esposito, Grant Curtis and Tim Lewis.
Transcript
00:01Yeah, thank you, everyone.
00:04The Fantastic Four were created in the 60s.
00:06It was the time of optimism, of looking to the stars.
00:09We're putting in our own version of the 60s in this retro-future world.
00:13Matt challenged us at the early stages to try and do as much as we could practically.
00:18We built this incredible Times Square backlot set,
00:21unbelievable sets for Reed's lab and the Baxter Building Department.
00:24We went on location to Spain.
00:27There was just so much care that was put into what the movie looks like.
00:31And I think that that aesthetic really informed a rich way of realizing these characters.
00:38It was such an imaginative space.
00:40It wasn't something that anyone had ever seen, so it was a magical experience.
00:44Herbie!
00:45Having a practical Herbie just felt like having another actor on set.
00:49I was very excited about Herbie.
00:50The reality of how big of a character he was going to be just grew and grew.
00:54He pretty much does everything that we'll see him do on screen.
00:57There's just something about Herbie.
00:58I kind of felt for him pretty quickly, and they're so cute.
01:00I felt like we had a shorthand.
01:01I felt like Herbie and Ben maybe spent a lot of time together.
01:04They were homies in a way.
01:05With Matt Shackman's approach, he's always done it through the lens of what was available to the filmmakers in the 60s.
01:11It was practically what can you achieve in camera.
01:13So why not shoot a miniature rocket?
01:15The miniature of the Excelsior spaceship behind us is 1 30th scale.
01:19It's about 13 and a half feet long.
01:21It feels very much of the time, but also retro future as well.
01:24Are we safe?
01:26And then Galactus is huge, you know, and one of the things we wanted to make sure that we captured was that scale.
01:33We approached it practically.
01:34It needs a tremendous amount of light.
01:36It needs special lenses.
01:38The biggest challenge was to make something on a human scale that we know is going to be blown up into an absolutely gigantic character.
01:45So every little bit of detail on him has to be minute so that when he is blown up to that huge scale, it all feels very real.
01:54With all of these things, what they've done with this world is beautiful.
01:59It was just so fun to step into an era that felt so familiar and yet so otherworldly.
02:07So nostalgic and futuristic at the same time.
02:10It's very intentionally a cinematic experience.
02:15We will face this together as a family.

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