Marvel recruits Spider-Man director for new Fantastic Four movie

By Rick Marshall Published December 11, 2020

The Fantastic Four, Marvel’s first family of superheroes, is headed back to the big screen.

Marvel Studios President Kevin Feige confirmed development of a new movie based on The Fantastic Four during the Disney Investor Day event held December 10. Although the film’s official title was not revealed, Feige did announce who will be behind the camera for the project: Spider-Man: Homecoming and Spider-Man: Far From Home director Jon Watts.

Jon Watts will direct the new feature film for Marvel's First Family, Fantastic Four! pic.twitter.com/Eu26ghxbGT

— Marvel Studios (@MarvelStudios) December 11, 2020

The upcoming movie will be the fifth live-action film based on the superhero team, which made its debut in The Fantastic Four No. 1, published in 1961. The characters were created by comics icons Stan Lee and Jack Kirby.

Previous big-screen iterations of the team’s adventures include the notorious, unreleased 1994 film The Fantastic Four directed by Roger Corman, as well as filmmaker Tim Story’s two-film series Fantastic Four and Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer, released in 2005 and 2007, respectively. Most recently, there was Josh Trank’s much-maligned 2015 film, Fantastic Four.

Marvel Studios finally gained the opportunity to make its own film based on the Fantastic Four after Disney’s acquisition of studio 21st Century Fox was finalized in 2019, and the studio announced just a few months later that a new film was in development. That announcement of Marvel’s Fantastic Four reboot occurred during Marvel’s presentation at San Diego’s Comic-Con International in July 2019.

Watts has quickly become one of Marvel’s rising stars, having directed the two Spider-Man movies set within the Marvel Cinematic Universe that not only introduced Peter Parker to the MCU, but managed to do so while the movie rights to the character are owned by Sony Pictures. The two Spider-Man films were the product of a partnership by Marvel and Sony, setting up the Fantastic Four film to be Watts’ first film to exist solely under the Marvel banner.

No release date has been set for the Fantastic Four movie at this point.

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A close up of Alex Ross's cover for Fantastic Four #1.

In 1961, writer Stan Lee and artist Jack Kirby created the Marvel Universe as we know it with Fantastic Four. As envisioned by Lee and Kirby, the group included Reed Richards/Mr. Fantastic, Susan Storm/Invisible Girl (Sue later renamed herself Invisible Woman), Johnny Storm/Human Torch, and Ben Grimm/The Thing. The team was transformed and given superhuman abilities due to exposure to cosmic rays on an unauthorized space flight. But in the face of adversity, the FF decided to band together to protect the Earth. And they soon found themselves as the harbinger of a new age of heroes that included Spider-Man, Hulk, the Avengers, and the X-Men.

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