If you were hoping to get a first look at Miles Teller, Kate Mara, Michael B. Jordan and Jamie Bell as the Fantastic Four at Comic-Con this weekend, then I’m afraid you’re out of luck. The Josh Trank-directed reboot was absent from 20th Century Fox’s schedule for its Hall H presentation on Friday, and now writer / producer Simon Kinberg has stated categorically that Fox has no Fantastic Four surprise in store.
“I can definitively officially tell you that there will not be anything from The Fantastic Four at this year’s Comic Con,” Kinberg tells Latino-Review. “We are still very much in the middle of shooting and we don’t want to show anything until it’s ready and it’s not ready yet. We want the first stuff that we show from the film to really blow people away, and it will but we have got to wait until it’s ready. We are hopefully going to be refining the way the people see the Fantastic Four movies. There are so many things we are doing different from the previous film and so many things different from other comic books films. When we really step forward we want it to be with our best foot forward. Instead of rushing something together for the Con we’d rather really wait until we have that perfect first image, perfect first sequence and first scene to show people. And I know that there’s a lot of people that think that’s the big surprise from Fox this year at the Con and knowing that I’m talking to a reporter and I’m going on record that I’m saying unfortunately that will not be a surprise for the fans of Comic-Con this year.”
Kinberg then went on to discuss Fox’s next superhero movie X-Men: Apocalypse, and how it fits in with X-Men: First Class and X-Men: Apocalypse: “We think about these X-Men movies as spread over – X-Men: First Class, Days of Future Past to Apocalypse was imagined as a trilogy for us. It’s the Origin stories in some ways of Charles, Raven, Hank and Eric and we will be settling things up in Apocalypse that will be generating new stories. We look at it globally as to where to mutants fit into the world. That’s why we jump from the 60’s to the 70’s and now the 80’s. We really want to be able to track the progression of the world and where do mutants fit in that world. It’s a pretty radical thing to do in any movie but certainly in a superhero franchise where you are jumping a decade each time you make a film. The reason that it is globally is that we wanted to be able to track the impact of mutants and the emergence of mutants into the world. Personally, we are very clear from the beginning as to how Charles, Eric and Raven especially dovetail, duck and weave in and out of each others lives. We were building, in some ways, a trilogy that is a story of three people; a brother, a little sister and another man who comes, in some ways, as a brother and how that sister leaves with the new brother. The war for that sisters’ soul between these two men defines First Class, Days of Future Past and Apocalypse. That’s a larger story we are telling even though each of those films is its own coherent and complete film. You can look at the arc of those three characters almost like a television show arcing over three complete episodes.”
And finally, he also took a moment to address the introduction of Channing Tatum as Gambit, and whether this will be in Apocalypse or a solo movie: “I genuinely don’t know the answer to that question. “It’s something we are all talking about whether it would be good for Gambit to be in a mainline X-Men movie or he would be in his own stand-alone movie potentially one day to be able to be in another X-Men movie after his Gambit movie introduces him. I really don’t know the answer. I don’t think there is a hard and fast rule which way is better. I think both ways have worked and I think actually the real question will be is there a role that is strong and specific enough for Gambit in a mainline X-Men movie whether it be Apocalypse or future X-Men movie that would be the right way to introduce the character. You don’t want to stick characters in these movies and manufacture something for them to do. You want the movie to tell you that it needs another character or ideally it needs this specific character.”
The Fantastic Four is set for release on June 19th 2015, with X-Men: Apocalypse following on May 27th 2016.
Originally published July 23, 2014. Updated April 12, 2018.
