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Fantastic Four Movie

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15:16 / 08.07.04

from CINESCAPE.com:

Movie News - Cinescape.com

Three of the FANTASTIC FOUR have been found
But where is The Invisible Woman?

----------------------------------------------------
Dateline: Thursday, July 8, 2004

By: PATRICK SAURIOL
By: News Editor
Source: The Hollywood Reporter

Both The Hollywood Reporter and Variety break word today that three of the FANTASTIC FOUR have been cast. They are:

Ioan Gruffudd, probably still best remembered for playing Horatio Hornblower in a number of A&E movies, has landed the role of brilliant scientist Reed Richards, a.k.a. "Mr. Fantastic". Mr. Fantastic is gifted with the ability to stretch his body to great lengths and shapes. Gruffudd can currently be seen playing Lancelot in KING ARTHUR.

Chris Evans will play Johnny Storm, a.k.a. "the Human Torch", the young man who can ignite his body into flames and also fly in the air. Evans has starred in NOT ANOTHER TEEN MOVIE, THE PERFECT SCORE and will be seen in the upcoming thriller CELLULAR.

Reporter states that the casting of THE SHIELD star Michael Chiklis as Ben Grimm, a.k.a. "The Thing", is a done deal. Prior to today's article it was believed that Chiklis was the best-known frontrunner for the role and not confirmed to play the superstrong, rockfaced character.

That leaves two main parts still up for grabs, those being for Sue Storm/"The Invisible Woman" and Victor Von Damme/"Doctor Doom". Interestingly, this week's rumor published in the comic gossip column 'Lying in the Gutters' stated that Elisha Cuthbert [of TV's "24"] had landed the Sue Storm part. If that were indeed the case, wouldn't she have been revealed in the Reporter story?

Variety is the one that follows up on the missing Invisible Woman. The trade notes that they've heard buzz that the prime candidate for Sue is Jessica Alba (DARK ANGEL), but that Keri Russell (FELICITY) and Rachel McAdams are also possibilities.

------------------

Discuss.

I don't know the other actors well, but I do know that Chiklis is perfect casting as Ben Grimm, and if it is indeed the babealicious Elisha Cuthbert as Sue, many fanboys will be very, very happy.

Yotsuba & Benjamin!

15:32 / 08.07.04

Shoulda been Reilly, man. John C. Reilly IS Benny Grimm.

I'm still sore at old Mike Chicklets for beating out Peter Krause. HACK.

They could've really dug in, dropped a huge wad and made the FF truly Fantastic, chuck cash at like Guy Pierce and Reilly and like Jennifer Jason Leigh, but instead we get this crap. TI-ERD.

But, whatever. It could conceivably be good on some level. This is just the cast. But still. Reilly would have been so so def.

16:51 / 08.07.04

Ioan Gruffudd?

What the fuck? Has the world gone insane?

This is looking very C-list already and is almost certainly going to be a Daredevil of a movie. I mean, I honestly cannot believe the Reed Richards effects will look remotely good. But hey, what do I know.

16:57 / 08.07.04

For the benfit of those not familiar with the actors in question:

Mr. Fantastic

Human Torch

Thing (Woof!)

Invisible Woman?

17:15 / 08.07.04

I vote Elisha Cuthbert, just cause the others don't seem even remotely appropriate for Sue.

18:32 / 08.07.04

I'm guessing that they're going for the Ult FF take on the classic characters then?

Victor Van Damme?
That still doesn't sound right even after I've read the issue, I keep picturing Jean Claude.

It will also be odd if I find Reed more attractive than Johnny. Isn't the guy playing Ben a bit too old for the rest of the younger cast?

I doubt this will be a Daredevil of a movie (despite the fact I really enjoyed DD), except for a few of the X-men most Marvel licenses have had B/C-listers in. Save the money for the CGI I say, good idea. Hugh Jackman was a nobody before X-men and despite having some meaty roles under his belt Tobey Maguire was hardly an A-lister when he signed up for Spidey.
These movies make stars, they don't need to pay for them.

(save Ian and Patrick but again neither were exactly superstars when they were cast for their roles in X-men, LOTR wasn't out yet and Star Trek isn't what I'd call A-list despite the fact I love it)

21:19 / 08.07.04

My vote's for Keri Russell... not because she'd bring anything to the role whatsoever over the others... but because she's just so damn cute.

But Chiklis as The Thing should be interesting to see.

23:27 / 08.07.04

Chiklis is perfect. he's born for this role. Elisha Cuthbert would be my vote for Sue, or the chick from Mean Girls.

the rest of them... ehhh...

god, i hope they don't call him Van Damme in this, either.

02:30 / 09.07.04

Oh god...did any of you ever see the early-ninties-in-the-vault version of FF? The neurosis-as-superpower explanations? The cheesy effects? The final, sinister, moving claw?

Anything will be better than that.

No star here laces

02:49 / 09.07.04

Ummm, Halle Berry was quite a big star before X-Men, no?

08:01 / 09.07.04

Not a huge one no, her Oscar (which is what really propelled her to superstar status) came after.
She was a name but I think less of a name than Ian or Patrick. Big in her own right as a black female actor but hardly the "star" she is now.

08:04 / 09.07.04

In fact I think it's ironic that Daredevil had Ben Affleck (definitely the biggest "name" in a Marvel film so far) as the lead role but was still quite a modestly budgeted movie (in comparion to Spidey and X2).

08:15 / 09.07.04

Haven't seen the old F.F. film, but I'm sure they did alright for 2 Million, and the fact the film was never meant to ever be released, it was just a cheap trick to let the studio hang onto the rights for another few years until they could be bothered making a real big-budget film...

Yotsuba & Benjamin!

13:28 / 09.07.04

Ha!

Woof is fuckin' right.

How is that The Everlovin' Blue Eyed Thing? He's The fucking Abomination!

Suedey! SHOT FOR MEAT!

13:42 / 09.07.04

Ah, but remember Halle Berry is now too big a star for X-Men (she doesn't do "bit-parts") and will only return if she has more to do. If only she could act. Apparently they're considering Christina Milian as a replacement...

This has nothing to do with anything, to be honest. I just thought it was funny. And it's all the same topic really.

Spyder Todd 2008

14:12 / 09.07.04

Suedehead and I are on similar wavelenghts, Hale Berry is waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay overrated. She's not that hot. She isn't that great an actress. And Storm isn't that cool.

14:17 / 09.07.04

Woof is fuckin' right.

How is that The Everlovin' Blue Eyed Thing? He's The fucking Abomination!

"Woof" is a compliment. Chiklis is fucking gorgeous.

Regrettable Juvenilia

14:31 / 09.07.04

Glad to see people are considering the important requirements for each role, and that the conclusion we've come to about the Invisible Woman is that she must look b-b-babealicious!

Chiklis will be an excellent Ben Grimm.

14:51 / 09.07.04

Well, I don't have any idea who two of the women are, so I can hardly comment on their suitablility. I only know Alba from the craptastic "Dark Angel" and yer wan from "Felicity" seems wholly unsuitable...

05:57 / 10.07.04

Well, after Spider-Man and X-Men, I think we're about due for a superhero-based, studio-fuXXord mega-bomb MESS, and it looks like FF is it. It's just too big, too complex, too specific, and considering the way even Daredevil had to be snuck by the executives almost guerilla-filmmaking style, making the red suit look black in the fight scenes and fixing the mask with CGI post-production, does anyone honestly think this won't turn out as the death of comicbook adaptations for the forseeable future? We all know how it'll go- the studio will panic, start changing things at random to make it look like they're doing something, and BAM, you've got Streetfighter: The Ultimate Battle, or Solar Warriors, or Garfield, or something. There's no way they can do this right to keep both the fans and the proles happy. You watch- It'll make Legion of Extraordinary Gentlemen look like Donner's Superman.
I'd be sooo fucking happy to be proven wrong, I looove the characters, even if there hasn't been a run on the comic I can stand since forever, but I got a BAAAAAD feeling about this.

08:38 / 10.07.04

Would anyone mind posting some more pictures of Jessica Alba? I have to go to work now, and I'd like them to be here when I get back. Cheers,

Seth.

Regrettable Juvenilia

13:58 / 10.07.04

it looks like FF is it

yes.we can tell tjhat becoz of all thee EVIDENSE.

Jack The Bodiless

23:37 / 10.07.04

In all fairness, you kind of can. Chiklis is a great actor, and would make a great Ben Grimm, I agree. A great Thing? Oh, fuck off. He's an enormous piece of orange brickwork. How is any actor except Keanu Reeves perfect casting to play an enormous piece of orange brickwork? The Thing's gonna be CGI for most of the film anyway if they've got ANY brains. Which is not necessarily a foregone conclusion, obviously.

They've cast Ioan Gruffudd because of the Jackman/Bloom factor - actor is cast as part of ensemble in action-fantasy movie that hits big. Actor gets instant box-office cred with the accountants. Everyone clamours for their services. Those who're too slow miss out. He's obviously nowhere near what's needed for the role, but that's not what they're interested in. With that criteria for casting, they could cast Kylie Minogue as Sue Storm and a zippo lighter as Johnny Storm, and get the same basic effect.

At the end of the day, the Fantastic Four is probably the least credible of all of Marvel's old-school books. It's all cheese from start to finish, and there's no hook for a 21st century audience (one not already into the "characters") to get into. The costumes are lamer that the X-mens', as are the character names and powers. Mr Fantastic will look just tragic on the big screen. The Invisible Woman? The Hollow Man wasn't a good film, and at least he was psychotic in that one. The Thing? Cut-price Hulk. At least the CGI should be easier to manage... The Human Torch - again, CGI-tastic. The only way this could possibly work on the big screen is if they went a retro-pastiche route, a la Starsky & Hutch. The central concepts are so poor, it'll be instant IMDB graveyard otherwise, like it's still unreleased predecessor (which is actually fantastic, in a "this film is so shit it's actually the best film ever" kind of way).

Yotsuba & Benjamin!

00:26 / 11.07.04

Wow.

The Thing is probably the only character in the Fantastic Four that needs to be played well. Everyone else is completely two-dimensional (smart, brash, um, female). The Thing is really the heart of the FF, the only person who's at all affected by the transformations and whatever. You throw Reilly in, maybe you gewt a little glimpse of that pathos. Chicklets? "Let's go kick some Mole-Man ass." "Aren't you sort of depressed that you'll never feel the touch of anyther human being?" "Shut up and get out of my way. There's Mole-Men to punch."

Fuck. That. He was cast because he's bald.

I'm prepared to be surprised though. If there's any comic that built to provide pure spectacle, it's this one. Rock a little Fin Fang Foom tearing up TRL, I'm completely sold. When it premieres on Cinemax.

We'll see though. I mean they even shot a frame yet.

I do love the comic though, but hey, that's for another thread.

01:31 / 11.07.04

Morgue, how dare you use the word proles to describe anyone. Least of all everyone who isn't a comic-book fan. I mean, for fucks sake. Loaded word, much?

Yotsuba & Benjamin!

01:50 / 11.07.04

You mean voles? The little tiny mice?

Brigade du jour

03:23 / 11.07.04

At the end of the day, the Fantastic Four is probably the least credible of all of Marvel's old-school books. It's all cheese from start to finish, and there's no hook for a 21st century audience (one not already into the "characters") to get into. The costumes are lamer that the X-mens', as are the character names and powers. Mr Fantastic will look just tragic on the big screen. The Invisible Woman? The Hollow Man wasn't a good film, and at least he was psychotic in that one. The Thing? Cut-price Hulk. At least the CGI should be easier to manage... The Human Torch - again, CGI-tastic. The only way this could possibly work on the big screen is if they went a retro-pastiche route, a la Starsky & Hutch.

Hear hear. I'm sure I read somewhere some studio exec or putative producer saying that The FF should be done as a comedy. I got to tell you, I'm all for that idea! For pretty much the exact reasons Jack the B gave.

I mean, I suppose all comic-book movies have to balance on that ever-finer line between serious and funny, earnest and ironic, but FF will have to balance at Olympic level.

05:32 / 11.07.04

What you have to remember about Grimm is when he's in a good mood, he's Jimmy Durante, when he's pissed off he's Lawrence Tierney.
"Fire up the Beta-Max, Stretcho!"
And as for the non-comic-reading public... "Proles" is a lot nicer than what I usually call them.

10:53 / 11.07.04

It won't be a dark re-interpretation of the FF, they are and will always be at the very core of their characteristics a family unit.
Ergo the film will have to play to the family audiences.
No uber violence, no terrifying CGI, no create-a-more-complex-character angst.
This will be a family movie aimed squarely at the summer-holidays market.
It has the potential to look Lost in Space-esque (especially if they go the sci-fi route a la Waid's current Imaginauts) or even, dare I say it, Thunderbirds-esque if they go too far down the kiddy-comedy route.

I don't think this is the death toll for comic book movies in any way shape or form. LofEG was trite and comic fans and "proles" (get over it) alike hated it, Hulk was pants (I fell asleep twice trying to watch that film), DD was snuck under the radar and did remarkably well considering it had to carry the weight of Spiderman's success on it's shoulders, haven't seen Hellboy or Punisher yet but I've heard contradictory reviews of both.

There will be plenty of cack-comic book films in the future, FF may well be one of them but to dismiss it after the first cast list is announced is a teeny bit premature.

As far as the powers/CGI goes Thing will be easier to CGI than the Hulk cos he doesn't look remotely human. LOTR shows us that fire CGI is now possible. Sue's invisiblity is probably the easiest power to (not) show and as the film doesn't rest on just her (unlike Hollow Man) they don't have to spend too much time making you believe that she's there/not there. Reed is the only one I have concerns about because his stretched body could come off majorly goofy but Toad's tongue looked "ok" in X-men and it's a similar principle. Doom is armour, thats easy.

The whole premise does kinda rest on the pitch that was rumoured to have been accepted last year about the FF being a "normal family unit" who have wacky powers and sit-com like comedy insues. That doesn't sound fun to me.

11:42 / 12.07.04

I can see this working if they go into a primary-colour pure spectacle overload. Y'know, take it the wide-eyed wonder route, like they seem to be doing with Sky Captain.

12:32 / 12.07.04

In a perfect world where budget restriction was nothing more than a myth movie producers told to scare each other, the Fantastic Four would be:

Invisible Woman: Charlize Theron. She is 60s Invisible Girl.

The Thing: John C. Reilly. Gruff yet manly?

Human Torch: Paul Walker. Beautiful, blonde, arrogant, it's like Paul Walker has been playing Johnny Storm all his life and no one has ever told him.

Mr. Fantastic: George Clooney, I suppose. He's got the hair thing and I don't know...he's famous. I actually like the idea of that Ioan Gruffudd playing the strechable Reed Richards.

Dr. Doom: Jude Law...irony?

The hook for a 21st century audience is societies obsession with celebrity. Media creating stars and them turning on them. I'd watch that.

Yotsuba & Benjamin!

12:32 / 12.07.04

A wide-eyed film which will undoubtedly result in wide areas of space between any filled seats in theaters.

FF just needs to look as jazzy and New York as Spider-Man. That's really the main interesting thing about FF, giant purple people eaters (holy horseshit I actually just used that properly in a fucking sentence) traipsing through Midtown. There's no need for any Sky Captain esque flat-tation.

Yotsuba & Benjamin!

12:34 / 12.07.04

The hook for a 21st century audience is societies obsession with celebrity. Media creating stars and them turning on them. I'd watch that.

Exactly! And that's what I heard was the original pitch, the FF destroying a giant monster in front of TRL. More please!

13:22 / 12.07.04

Yeah! Like a live action version of Alex Ross' Marvels. The Thing throwing cars and the Human Torch flying above the city. That would so work. They'd be these celebrities that people wouldn't be able to get enough of at first. They'd be like the Osbourne's; appearing on magazine covers and on talks shows. They'd have fight to villains while trying to avoid the paparazzi. Then, because they're so powerful they cause more damage than good and the public start seeing them as a nuisance. They should be like "Why aren't you like Spiderman he never pulls street signs out of the ground or sets things on fire. We hate you now”. People are so fickle, damn them.

21:40 / 12.07.04

New rumors from Cinescape.com -- Sarah Wynter actually looks the best for the role out of all of the above. I don't watch 24, but they have a pic next to the Cinescape article referenced below...she's more mature looking than any of the other late teens/early 20something girls previously mentioned.

-------

Movie Website News
Wynter turns invisible for FANTASTIC FOUR?
Actress rumored to have landed the job

-------------------------------------------------
Dateline: Monday, July 12, 2004

By: PATRICK SAURIOL
By: News Editor
Source: Fanboy Planet

With three of the FANTASTIC FOUR's quartet signed, sealed and delivered, all that remains is the announcement as to which actress will play the part of Sue Storm, a.k.a. The Invisible Woman. Names have been swirling around for weeks, but this past weekend the amigos at Fanboy Planet decided to get in on the action and publish a tip they received. If it's real then we've found our Sue.

According to the Planet's scooper, actress Sarah Wynter (24, THE 6th DAY) isn't just up for the role, she's already got it. Wynter's name hasn't been mentioned by any outlet up until now, but if FB's scoop is right, we imagine that an announcement in the trades would be coming sometime this week.

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