Murphy's Multiverse

Tag: The Fantastic Four

  • 12 MCU Characters Who Could Cameo in a 1960s Set ‘The Fantastic Four’

    12 MCU Characters Who Could Cameo in a 1960s Set ‘The Fantastic Four’

    A surprise Valentine’s Day announcement revealed the cast, release date, new logo and a slightly different title for Marvel Studios long-gestating The Fantastic Four. As an added bonus, the artwork that revealed Pedro Pascal, Vanessa Kirby, Ebon Moss-Bachrach and Joseph Quinn as the MCU’s First Family hinted at the film being set in the 1960s and that Aunt Petunia’s favorite nephew will be an astronaut giving fans hope that the film will take at least some inspiration from Stan Lee and Jack Kirby‘s original book.

    Should the film–or part of it–ultimately take place in the ’60s (and in MCU’s 616 universe), there would be ample opportunity for Matt Shakman to curate some ties to the MCU by including cameos from existing MCU characters. To that end, here are a dozen characters listed alphabetically that could pop up in 2025’s The Fantastic Four.

    Azzuri

    The grandfather of T’Challa and Shuri, Azzuri would have been the Black Panther of Wakanda in the 1960s in the MCU. T’Challa made his first Marvel Comics appearance in the pages of Fantastic Four #52, so finding a way to include Wakanda and a Black Panther in The Fantastic Four would serve as a nice nod to that comic book history. So far, Azzuri has only been referenced but his sons, T’Chaka and N’Jobu, who were born in the ’50s, have been on screen in the MCU already. Having one of the brightest minds on the planet visit Wakanda would be a great way to add to the in-universe history of Wakanda and, as it was in the comics, provide an opportunity for the team to show their skills.

    Bucky Barnes as The Winter Soldier

    Given that he killed JFK in 1963, Bucky was out of stasis and active for at least some of the decade. Given the magazine cover of Lyndon B. Johnson in the artwork is from December 13th, 1963–just after LBJ took office–it could hint at either an appearance or name drop of The Winter Solider in The Fantastic Four.

    Ulysses Bloodstone

    The great monster hunter was just a crusty corpse when he appeared in Werewolf By Night, but Ulysses Bloodstone’s extra-long life means he was definitely doing his thing in the 1960s. Like many of the characters on this list, Bloodstone does have a shared comic book history with the Fantastic Four and the Fantastic Four have a long list of monsters they’ve squared off with over the years. While there’s certainly a primary antagonist and a primary mission in The Fantastic Four, if Shakman is taking the angle that the team is a known quantity, he could include a fun montage of some of their greatest hits which could include them teaming up with Bloodstone to take down a monster such as Diablo, like they did Tales of Suspense #9.

    Peggy Carter

    If Marvel Studios is going to go the route of including cameos in The Fantastic Four, Haley Atwell‘s Peggy Carter has to be considered the safest bet. S.H.I.E.L.D. was founded in the 1950s and there’s no way someone like Reed Richards would go unnoticed by Carter. Such a cameo could connect to Reed’s father, Nathaniel Richards, a brilliant scientist in his own right who was part of the clandestine Brotherhood of the Shield in the comics; should the MCU wish to go down that road, they could include bits of Jonathan Hickman’s S.H.I.E.L.D., which detailed the secret history of the organization which included Richards and another character included on this list: Howard Stark.

    Cosmo

    Since it’s taken so long for Marvel Studios to be able to roll out The Fantastic Four, Ben Grimm and his buddies won’t be the first space travelers fans of the MCU have met. Though Cosmo didn’t go to space until 1966, the Russians started their space program in 1955 so if the film is set in 1963, Cosmo could make a cameo if part of the story centers on the space race.

    Namor

    Everyone who has even a passing interest in Marvel Comics knows about Namor’s obsession with Sue Storm. The Fantastic Four provides ample opportunity for that obsession to work its way into the MCU, tie into the team’s potential interaction with Wakandans (it’s clear that the lineage of Black Panthers does not come with the promise of full disclosure of anything at all) and add to the story of why the MCU’s El Niño Sin Amor, who was born in 1571, is such a dick.

    Hank Pym and Janet van Dyne

    Hank Pym and Janet van Dyne have already been established to have worked for S.H.I.E.L.D. in 1970 and it wouldn’t take much creativity to have Pym working either with Reed Richards or his father, Nathaniel, in the 1960s. As Marvel Studios looks to reframe things moving forward, giving more screen time to two original Avengers who were shafted by the studio’s legacy issues could hardly be a bad thing!

    Obidiah Stane

    Sure, sure the MCU has a Tony Stark obsession and bringing Jeff Bridges’ Obidiah Stane into The Fantastic Four and the Multiverse Saga would certainly only add to that; however, Obi was working with Howard Stark and Anton Vanko as early as 1963 and with his son set to show up in Ironheart, it would be a fun way to connect the past and present of the MCU.

    Howard Stark

    If Peggy Carter is the safest bet for a cameo, Howard Stark is the clear second choice (and the two may very well be a package deal). Marvel Studios has an opportunity to do something fascinating here (see the Nathaniel Richards bit above), should they choose to do so; they could also apply the K.I.S.S. method and nobody would blame them. Either way, the studio has established Howard Stark as one of the greatest minds of the 20th century so if The Fantastic Four is set in the 616’s ’60s, it’s impossible to imagine Howard and Reed would not have interacted.

    Anton Vanko

    It always felt like Anton Vanko was supposed to matter a bit more than he did and, as it turns out, his defection to the United States occurred in 1963…the same year as the magazine read by Ben Grimm was published (in the real world). While his work with Howard on The Unit Project may have been important to the Infinity Saga, tying him into the Brotherhood of the Shield and The Fantastic Four could keep the character alive into the Multiverse Saga.

    Arnim Zola

    As far as major evil comic book organizations go in the MCU, only A.I.M. has been rendered less relevant than Hydra (unless you count Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.). While a cameo certainly won’t settle that debt, an appearance by Toby Jones‘ Arnim Zola, who was definitely busy with Project Insight and building Hydra into the infrastructure of S.H.I.E.L.D. in the 1960s, would at least salve the wound a bit.

  • ‘Black Widow’ Writer Brought on to “Polish” Script for ‘The Fantastic Four’

    ‘Black Widow’ Writer Brought on to “Polish” Script for ‘The Fantastic Four’

    As the start of production on Marvel Studios long-awaited Fantastic Four reboot draws near, a new trade report has revealed a surprising bit of info about the studio’s efforts to improve the script. According to THR, Black Widow scribe Eric Pearson was brought on by the studio to “polish” the script before production begins this Summer.

    The Fantastic Four was originally written by Jeff Kaplan and Ian Springer before being rewritten by Avatar: The Way of Water and Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes writer Josh Friedman, who was brought on to beef up the science-fiction aspects of the project. According to THR’s report, Pearson, who also worked on Thor: Ragnarok and wrote the first draft of Thunderbolts for the studio, “has a reputation for taking projects over the finish line.”

    The Fantastic Four, which was first announced at SDCC ’19, was originally set to be directed by Spider-Man: Homecoming, Spider-Man: Far From Home and Spider-Man: No Way Home skipper Jon Watts. However, Watts left the project in April 2022, leaving the project without a director until Matt Shakman took the regins in August 2022. Shakman and the studio are taking their time with the project as it stands to be one of Marvel’s biggest draws in years as it brings Marvel Comics First Family into the MCU. After an extensive casting search, Pedro Pascal, Vanessa Kirby, Joseph Quinn and Ebon Moss-Bachrach were announced as the Fantastic Four in February and production is slated to get underway this Summer in the UK.

    The Fantastic Four is currently slated to hit theaters on July 25, 2025.

    Source: THR

  • How ‘Doom Patrol’ Could Serve as a Template for Marvel Studios Future Plans

    How ‘Doom Patrol’ Could Serve as a Template for Marvel Studios Future Plans

    When Disney purchased 21st Century Fox in 2019, Marvel Studios gained access to the live-action rights of a treasure trove of Marvel Comics characters. The X-Men. The Fantastic Four. Doctor Doom. Galactus. The Silver Surfer. Annihilus. The list goes on…and it really goes on. However, 3 years after the deal was sealed, we’ve only seen a Variant of Kang the Conqueror and some Skrulls, which were already kinda-sorta useable anyway, while Marvel Studios carefully constructs their plans for the mutants and The First Family.

    To date, very little is known about said plans. At SDCC ’19, Kevin Feige announced that a Fantastic Four film was on the way and teased the arrival of the mutants. Since then, however, other than announcing that the new FF film would be helmed Jon Watts, whose recently completed Spider-Man trilogy integrated the Sony-owned Webslinger into the MCU, there has been no official news. Word did come that Marvel Studios was seeking pitches on The Mutants and minor tidbits have surfaced here and there about the Fantastic Four, but nearly 3 years later fans are still in the dark. And that’s ok. It’s ok because, as Feige well knows, Marvel Studios has to proceed carefully with both properties because, simply put, they have to get it right.

    As with Spider-Man, the Fantastic Four and X-Men have had previous and relatively recent films. In the case of the FF, the most recent attempt to bring the characters to resulted in one of the most despised superhero films of all times; in the case of The X-Men, Fox’s love affair with Wolverine and inattention to continuity left some of the best characters on the bench, some others poorly adapted and fans feeling fairly frustrated with the end result. As Marvel Studios attempts to reboot these properties, fans are going to carry their experiences with these previous iterations with them into the new projects. In a way, that means Feige and the Parliament are starting in a hole they didn’t dig, but if they don’t get it right out of the gate with these projects, they’ll bury what should be two different properties that could each generate a decade’s worth of stories.

    Fantastic Four Star Blames Fox for 'Goofy' Doctor Doom: 'It's a Shame'

    As mentioned previously, fans will be be wary of these MCU reboots as they carry the trauma of the previous versions with them into theaters. If the MCU versions of these properties start to follow familiar arcs or feel similar to what Fox did, fans will find themselves triggered and the aforementioned decade of projects will be DOA. In this case, doing it right almost certainly means they need to do it very differently to separate the MCU versions from the Fox versions as much as possible. That’s no easy task, given that both the Fantastic Four and The X-Men franchises have each been “rebooted” once already, however, Feige and The Parliament could find some inspiration in an already established property that has been incredibly successful: Doom Patrol.

    The three properties are a great example divergent evolution in comics, so while their modern day iterations don’t seem to be incredibly similar, Doom Patrol, the X-Men and the Fantastic Four are fairly inexorably entangled and have been for nearly 50 years. The group of metahuman misfits that came to be known as Doom Patrol first appeared as The Legion of the Strange in the pages of 1963’s My Greatest Adventure #80. Just 3 months later, The X-Men #1 introduced comic readers to the world of mutants whose strange powers kept them from being accepted by society. If the similarities of a team of weirdos being led by a wheelchair-bound doctor/professor hadn’t ever occurred to you, they certainly did to Doom Patrol creator Arnold Drake, who once stated his belief that his plans for the team somehow made their way to X-Men creator Stan Lee, allowing him to launch his book shortly after the Doom Patrol first appeared. While Drake’s stance on “insider trading” softened over time, the reality is that other than some superficial similarities, the books didn’t truly have much in common. The X-Men dealt with themes of social injustice while Doom Patrol found themselves caught up in the incredibly strange types of adventures that fans of the HBO Max streaming series have come to know and love. And in that regard, it’s another group of Marvel heroes that have much more in common with Doom Patrol than the X-Men really ever did.

    As Marvel Studios prepares to bring the First Family to the MCU, they could certainly take a few cues from the way that DC has brought Doom Patrol into live-action. Most importantly, Jon Watts and the creatives behind the project should embrace the strangeness that really defined the early days of The Fantastic Four and has made Doom Patrol a streaming hit. The Fantastic Four has been drastically redefined over the years, but their roots grew through stories about Mole Man and Monster Isle, Skrulls being turned into cows, traveling through time and having Ben Grimm be mistaken for Blackbeard, meeting the Impossible Man and many more ludicrous adventures that often take a back seat to Doctor Doom.

    In order for Marvel Studios’ Fantastic Four to be successful, it has to be different from its predecessors. Embracing the weirdness of the Puppet Master, The Red Ghost and His Indescribable Super Apes, the Mad Thinker and his Awesome Android ensures that nobody will mistake this iteration for one of Fox’s attempts. Doom Patrol has provided a template for doing so successfully, not just because of the weirdness, but because the series has captured something that is also central to the story of the Fantastic Four: a family.

    Sure, Doom Patrol isn’t a family in the same sense that the FF are, but they share a sense of tragedy and loss and loneliness that unites them. Over the course of several seasons, the characters of Doom Patrol have come to know, care for and rely on one another as a result of their crazy adventures and this idea is, at its core, what Marvel Studios could-maybe even should-do with their Fantastic Four. A family of explorers going on the type of weird adventures not previously seen in the MCU, but in the DCEU.