Can Brits save the Fantastic Four from another flop?

Marvel Entertainment has revealed the cast of the next Fantastic Four installment, and it's notably half British. Can this new cast turn things around for the formerly-flopped franchise?

Marvel Entertainment marked 14 February this year not with flowers and candy, but with the big reveal of its cast line-up for the forthcoming Fantastic Four movie. The latest iteration of the franchise will be directed by Matt Shakman and arrives in theatres on 25 July, 2025.

Marvel Entertainment confirmed in an announcement on X (the platform formerly known as Twitter) that it has cast Pedro Pascal, Vanessa Kirby, Ebon Moss-Bachrach and Joseph Quinn for the next installment.

This will be the fourth Fantastic Four movie, following 2005, 2007 and 2015 releases of the previous films based on the Marvel Comics superhero team. For those who need a refresher, the 2005 Fantastic Four release did not fare well with critics. Rotten Tomatoes critics gave it just a 28% and BBC Culture critic Owen Gleiberman called it "cutesy [and] cluttered." Still, the film held its own at the box office, earning $333 million (£ 264m) globally.

The 2007 release of Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer, did better, earning 38% from critics on Rotten Tomatoes who called it an "improvement on its predecessor" but "nevertheless a juvenile, simplistic picture that has little benefit beyond its special effects." The film took in about $289 million (£229m) globally. The next installment, in 2015, saw the franchise slip drastically, with critics giving it a mere 9% on Rotten Tomatoes. BBC Culture's Gleiberman called it "just a slender wisp of an origin story." Its box office earnings were also lackluster, at $167 million (£133m) overall worldwide, putting it well behind the 2005 and 2007 offerings. 

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 Despite these realities, Marvel is moving forward with the Fantastic Four franchise. And this time, the line-up of stars includes two British actors. Kirby, of English stage, television and film fame whose most recent turn included a BAFTA-award-winning performance as Princess Margaret in the Netflix series The Crown. There's also Quinn, who is perhaps most well-known for his well-regarded role as Eddie in Stranger Things, also from Netflix.

Rounding out the cast is U.S.-born Moss-Bachrach, best known for his Emmy-winning role on The Bear and who previously appeared in the short-lived television series The Punisher, which ran from 2017 through 2019 and Pascal, from Chile, who has had key roles in a string of hits including Disney+'s The Mandalorian, HBO's Game of Thrones and Last of Us, as well as the Netflix series Narcos.

So far, culture and film critics have offered positive reactions to Marvel's selection of actors and more moderated – but hopeful – support for the decision to make another installment in the struggling movie franchise.

The cast of the next Fantastic Four may not be marquee-name action heroes on par with the likes of Will Smith in his heyday or more recently, Dwayne Johnson, but that doesn't mean Marvel's selection lacks star power or appeal, say critics.

"This is a cast of superheroes to film critics, at least, who've been praising their talent for years," says Amy Nicholson, movie and TV critic for Rotten Tomatoes. "Whoever put them together seems to be chasing the chance to make a comic book movie with genuinely phenomenal performances. I hope they pull it off, for the actors' sake."

In fact, Nicholson argues that perhaps we've all grown a little too used to seeing only blockbuster celebrities filling such roles.

"Hollywood has become far too star-dependent," Nicholson continues. "Lately, nothing over a couple million dollars – let alone a superhero franchise – gets greenlit without big names."

Those types of casting requirements impede the development of new movie stars in the way Superman launched Christopher Reeve's career, Nicholson explains. In an ideal world, more producers would head in the same direction as the upcoming Fantastic Four installment, she says.

What's more, Ben Saunders, a professor of comic and cartoon studies and pop culture at the University of Oregon, who founded the school's comic studies program, says: If Pascal, who's had a string of high-profile roles, is not a bona fide A-lister, then who is? 

As for the British-leaning cast line-up resuscitating the ailing franchise, that's not out of the realm of possibility, suggests Saunders.

"It wouldn’t be the first time that British talent has helped to revitalise and reimagine some wonderful pieces of American culture," observes Saunders. "In the mid-1980s, many of the best British comics creators found themselves working for American publishers and some of the most influential comics of the late 20th century come from that period."

One need look no further than the two British creators behind Watchmen from U.S.-based DC Comics – Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons. Thanks to the talent of UK-born Moore and Gibbons, Watchmen became one of the best-selling and most critically acclaimed graphic novels (and later turned into a film and television series) of the past 50 years, says Saunders.

Whether two British actors will have a similar impact on the success of the next Fantastic Four installment remains to be seen. But Sean Boelman, a film critic for FandomWire, says the decision to cast the duo opens the door for intriguing character development options.

"It will be interesting to see what Vanessa Kirby and Joseph Quinn bring to their roles," he says. "Interestingly, the characters they play – Sue and Johnny Storm – are siblings." 

Will the film play into Kirby and Quinn’s shared nationality to make the movie characters British, Boelman ponders. "It would be a far cry from the versions portrayed by Jessica Alba and Chris Evans in the 2000s, and Kate Mara and Michael B. Jordan in 2015, but it could serve the actors’ chemistry in this family dynamic well," he says.

And, like Saunders, Boelman says: British or not, the newly selected cast has ample star power to pull in audiences. He calls it the most star-studded cast outside of the Eternals, which included the likes of Angelina Jolie and Selma Hayek.

"The Fantastic Four are known as the 'first family' of Marvel, so this movie doesn’t need a 'movie star' on the level of Angelina Jolie or Salma Hayek to connect with audiences," says Boelman. "Fresh, but known, faces like Pascal and Quinn will be more than enough to excite moviegoers."

While past installments of The Fantastic Four haven't been darlings among critics' circles, Saunders takes issue with those who suggest the films didn't do well commercially.

"There have been three Fantastic Four movies this century, and the first two did just fine," Saunders suggests. "They made millions. They wouldn’t have made the second if the first hadn’t done well. The cultural amnesia here is probably a function of the fact that the last Fantastic Four movie tanked hard, and probably deservedly so – but it wasn’t made by Marvel Studios. It was made by [20th Century] Fox."

If the next installment in the franchise flops like the 2015 film did, Saunders argues that won't be a byproduct of the actors chosen. "I’ve seen all of the current cast in other projects, and they are a talented bunch," he continues. "The issue won’t be the cast – they are great. The script is what matters."

There's also hope in the fact that the upcoming release is the first in the franchise set to be made by Marvel Studios, which "matters a lot to the final results." Saunders adds. 

Boelman offers a similar assessment, suggesting that the Fantastic Four franchise thus far has suffered from a lack of quality. But he, too, holds out hope for the next installment will be an improvement.

"The 2005 film was a moderate financial success, managing to turn a small profit because it was enjoyable enough," says Boelman. "Rise of the Silver Surfer and the oft-forgotten 2015 reboot failed, frankly, because no one liked them. If [director] Matt Shakman’s Fantastic Four is high quality, it will probably do much better at the box office. Fans liked his previous Marvel Comics outing, WandaVision, so the signs are pointing up." 

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