Check out the '1994 Cameos' Featurette for The Fantastic Four: First Steps, the latest addition to the MCU and introduction to Marvel's first family. Hear the process from the filmmakers at Marvel Studios on paying homage to the 1994 iteration of a Fantastic Four film that remained unreleased which starred Alex Hyde-White, Jay Underwood, Rebecca Staab, and Michael Bailey-Smith. The Fantastic Four: First Steps is streaming on Disney+ now.
The Fantastic Four: First Steps stars Pedro Pascal, Vanessa Kirby, Joseph Quinn, Ebon Moss-Bachrach, Ralph Ineson, and Julia Garner.
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.
The Fantastic Four: First Steps is streaming on Disney+ now.
00:10It's been one of the great teams in Marvel for a reason.
00:13You know, when you start these projects, you start doing your research.
00:16And as part of that homework, we did go back and look at the Corman Fantastic Four version.
00:21We watched it. We got excited about it.
00:24And, you know, Matt came into my office one day while we were prepping.
00:27He said, you know, it'd be really great to honor them somehow.
00:29We got to get them in this movie.
00:31And then shortly thereafter, Kevin and I were chatting.
00:33I said, hey, Matt's got this idea about getting the original Fantastic Four in this movie.
00:37What do you think?
00:38And he said, oh, man, that's the coolest ever.
00:40And from that day forward, we were just honestly looking for the right opportunity.
00:43And we found it. They came in.
00:45That was one of my favorite days on set.
00:47And you just saw the light in their eyes.
00:50This is Sue Storm, and I used to meet Reed Richards, Johnny Storm, and Bed Groom.
00:59The basic backstory is there was a film producer by the name of Bernd Eichinger.
01:05And Bernd had the rights, apart from Marvel, for the Fantastic Four.
01:09And he was going to lose the rights unless he went into production by a certain date.
01:12So he goes to Roger Corman and says, hey, I want to make this movie.
01:15Can you make this movie and make it right now and make it cheap?
01:17And Roger says, sure.
01:18We put together this million dollar movie, which for Corman was actually probably a very big budget at the time.
01:24But certainly not a budget that you need for a movie like the Fantastic Four.
01:28They did a lot of things right in that movie.
01:30And I've had a conversation with all four of them.
01:32One of the things I think they did extremely well was the character relationships.
01:35It holds up.
01:36And, you know, not every special effect on any movie holds up over time.
01:39But those were very real relationships that when we did our homework and we looked at the movie early on, we took note.
01:45The phrase happy accident can come to mind to answer the question of why was the casting so good?
01:53Especially under the gun in a situation that sort of needed to fit right away.
01:57The fact that we were given these roles relatively easily because they were under the gun allowed us to either trust ourselves or not.
02:03And part of the reluctant superhero dynamic of the dysfunctional Fantastic Four are embodied in the way the four of us worked with each other.
02:11Everybody was so close to those characters.
02:14I'm the big, strong, protecting guy, right?
02:17Kind of innocent and kind of humble.
02:19And that's how Ben Grimm is.
02:20Reed Richards, Alex, is a natural leader.
02:23Johnny Storm, as you know, is just a bubbly, fiery dude.
02:27And Rebecca's always been a little shy, right?
02:30Reserved.
02:31And that's the invisible woman.
02:32So we just did ourselves.
02:33We all knew that we were working on the Fantastic Four, Marvel's flagship comic book.
02:39And so we all took it very seriously.
02:42And Ole Cecil and the director got us all together for a pep talk right before we started shooting.
02:47And he said, gang, we know what we're doing.
02:49We know what we're up against, not having enough money for the effects that it needs to have.
02:54So let's focus on what we have control over.
02:56And he says, I'm going to do my best as a director.
02:59I want you all as actors to do your best.
03:02I want you to take this seriously.
03:03Develop the characters.
03:04And he said, let's work really hard at recreating the comic onto the screen.
03:09We were trying to be true to the comic book because we knew the audience.
03:13Like, we owed it to the audience.
03:15You go, they know this better than we do.
03:17So we better be accurate.
03:19And so we didn't even set out to go, oh, it's a period piece.
03:22You just go, well, it looks like this because that's what it looked like in the comic book.
03:26And so it gave it a little kind of timelessness just organically.
03:33We were filming at Rogers Studio, which is this dilapidated warehouse in Venice Beach, California.
03:39And rats and cockroaches and the place should have been condemned years before, you know.
03:44It's like being in the trenches of a war kind of thing.
03:47There was like one room where we would either hang out or change clothes if I had to change.
03:52And then when it was just bare bones, all of the wardrobe that I wear in the movies, my own clothes,
03:57I think everybody's wear their own clothes.
03:59Like the only real wardrobe were the blue suits and my wedding dress.
04:03And so when we got the suits the very first time and I put them on,
04:07you can actually see the hand stitching, like where the blue and the white is.
04:11And I said to the costume designer, it's like, you can see the stitching.
04:14And he's like, that's okay, because Sue made them.
04:16That's all we had to go with.
04:18I get there. I said, so I'm in the suit, right?
04:20And they go, uh, no, it took six months to build this suit.
04:24And this has already been done by optic nerve was who did it.
04:27So they had to hire a stunt guy named Carl Cifaglio.
04:30I was so destroyed and disappointed because that's the good part.
04:34So what I did is I was on the set every day he was on the set.
04:38And I made sure that we worked together as a good stunt guy would do it,
04:42make sure that he mimics what the actor is going to do.
04:44Then when ADR came in, I voiced everything and it's clobbering time.
04:49We knew that this could also be a calling card for all of us, right?
04:54This could put us on the maps in terms of boosting a career kind of thing.
04:58And so, uh, we took it seriously.
05:00Our whole passion with doing this was that we would get to do another one.
05:04It's like, if we do this good enough, you know, the next time we'll get the money,
05:07and then we can do two and we kind of had it all planned out.
05:10We went into production. We finished the movie.
05:12We were looking forward to it actually coming out.
05:15There was a premiere that was scheduled at the Mall of America.
05:18The comic world knew about the movie.
05:20We had done Comic Cons and conventions already at this point.
05:25After that trailer played at the Shrine Auditorium, Alex looks at me and he says,
05:31Michael, we've got to do something, you know, in that Alex voice.
05:35And I go, what do we do?
05:36He goes, we're going to hire a publicist.
05:37And I know somebody.
05:38And so I ended up paying for the publicist, about 15 grand in my own pocket.
05:41And we went around the country promoting this.
05:44There's an old actors thing.
05:46You have to go out and find your audience.
05:48We would go to little comic conventions.
05:50There was no such thing as big comic conventions.
05:52I think we went to one of the original San Diego Comic Cons, which was in a hotel.
05:56And we would show the trailer.
05:58And we would sign pictures.
05:59We were on, like, Hollywood Reporter, a film thread, all these different things.
06:03Just crazy.
06:04And then we promoted.
06:05We said, screw it.
06:06We're going to keep going.
06:07We're going to keep going.
06:08And we did.
06:09We've come, like, I think it was in either end of November or December.
06:12Oh, they called us and said, hey, we need to stop.
06:14The rights have been sold.
06:16The plug got pulled.
06:18It disappeared.
06:19And then that's what's then become just Hollywood lore for these last 30 years.
06:25Really makes me emotional because it was a real effort of love and fun.
06:30Films get shelved every day.
06:32We all know that.
06:33But not the way ours did.
06:34You know, and that really hurt us.
06:39Maybe 10 years later, the internet magnified all of that.
06:44So we were like a little fungus that grew into a big mushroom, you know?
06:47If they had just done it by the contract and, okay, now it's January 1st.
06:50We got some stuff in the can.
06:52Thanks and go home.
06:53There never would have been a movie.
06:55And I have to say, one time we were at a Comic Con in St. Louis.
06:58And they actually showed it in one of the ballrooms.
07:02The sound is incredible.
07:05And the music.
07:06And by that time, you know, the things that were kind of cheesy weren't like cheesy like, ugh, stupid cheesy.
07:12Like it was funny.
07:13And the stuff that was so sincere was kind of fun.
07:16And to watch it with an audience and you hear people laugh, you hear people cheer, you know, you get goosebumps like the music.
07:23You get a little teary-eyed.
07:25It was so phenomenal.
07:27You know, once we understood that people refer to this film as a hidden gem through internet and whatnot, you know, we were here all along.
07:35And finally we're in the right place at the right time to contribute.
07:38And yes, we are all thrilled of that.
07:40Thank you Fantastic Four!
07:42We've got to go again on that one.
07:45I can't count.
07:47Three, two, one, action!
07:49Thank you Fantastic Four!
07:51For the last 30 years, all of us, we've only ever wanted some kind of acknowledgement that a movie was made, right?
07:59That this movie exists.
08:01And whether we thought, oh man, would it be great if Marvel maybe put it on some DVD as an extra or a special or this, that or the other.
08:08But as Rebecca was saying, we were talking earlier, and she said, you know, but this is the one.
08:13This is the right one.
08:14There's something special, I think, about this version that's being made.
08:18And for us to fit in with this version, we had to wait 30 years.
08:23And that's okay!
08:24Thank you very much, everybody!
08:26In a sense, that is a marvel.
08:29That's something that, in a way, we sort of had to pretend we didn't do.
08:34Has maintained its relevance in the Marvel Universe.
08:38The countdown continues as the Fantastic Four prepare to welcome a new member of the family.
08:44You can imagine how that feels for an artist.
08:47We're laughing and joking coming onto the set here today because, you know, I said, guys, we're going from Roger Corman's rundown studio to Marvel.
08:57Any time we're together is fantastic, but this time especially.
09:02And to be included now in the Marvel Universe, it was elation.
09:07I mean, it was just a thrill.
09:09Again, this is 30 years in the making for us.
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