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Underground > Film, TV & Theatre >

Fantastic Four Movie

  
  

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tituba
07:00 / 13.07.04
I'd prefer Kate Bosworth to play the Invisible Woman and Chad Michael Murray to play the Human Torch. I think that Ioan Gruffudd would make a fine Mr.Fantastic and that Mike Chicklets would look better in the pre-Thing scenes than C.Reily. Who'd direct this thing? I'm thinking two things: ensemble and the 60's. The guy who did Pleasantville recreated that whole wholesome 50's sitcom atmosphere while still managing to turn that very thing on its head. That's what this movie needs, a tongue in cheek look at the 60's nuclear family but with more gamma radiation. Chris Colombus would also okay, he's good with sitcom movies.
 
 
Lord Morgue
09:49 / 13.07.04
I could live with Brian Thompson as Dr. Doom. I mean, body by David Prowse, voice by James Earl Jones, the man's practically Darth Vader already.
Who did they cast in the old movie? It was the fella who played the young Sean Connery, Professor Jones Sr. in the Young Indiana Jones series, as Reed, and The Boy Who Could Fly as the Torch... Grimm looked like a rubber lizard man, But I recall Doom actually looking pretty badass, although one guy I know who's seen the thing swears his cape was animated and he sounded like Bela Lugosi.

(sigh) Oh please, please PLEASE let them NOT go with this Ultimates Van Damme bullshit. I have nightmares about Doom doing the box splits, helicopter kicking Ben Grimm, and he keeps taking his pants off to show Sue "Thees line on my leg that onlee a bodeebuilder has."

And it is NOT sitcom, it's SOAP, SOAP, SOAP, damn you! (sob)
 
 
Hieronymus
00:26 / 15.07.04
Jessica Alba as Sue Storm? I don't see it.
 
 
FinderWolf
14:57 / 15.07.04
Wow, that's awful casting. Totally not Sue Storm in my book. Why not Sarah Wynter or Elisha Cuthbert? Too bad - though the other roles seem reasonably well-cast (of course Chiklis is fucking brilliant casting). oh well.
 
 
FinderWolf
17:12 / 15.07.04
Kate Bosworth would have been good too. BUT NOT JESSICA ALBA!!! A mediocre actress at best, and just not the right look, methinks.
 
 
FinderWolf
17:08 / 26.07.04
COMIC-CON: Fantastic Four Details Source: 'Clark Kent' Monday, July 26, 2004
(from SUPERHEROHYPE.com):

Honorary SHH! reporter 'Clark Kent' files this report on the new FF film from the Comic Con presentation.

The F4 panel consisted of Avi Arad (Producer), Ralph Winter (Producer), Tim Story (Director), Ioan Gruffudd (Reed Richards), Jessica Alba (Sue Storm), and Michael Chiklis (Ben Grim)...who came out proudly displaying a Marvel Legends "Thing" figure.

The panel didn't go on for too long, somewhere in the ballpark of 30min, but here are a few key points that were brought up during the discussion...

- The production team has already completed designs for the costumes that the F4 will wear during the movie. Tim Story and Avi Arad were both quoted as saying "these are VERY COOL designs that we think you'll all like...a cross between the early Kirby designs, and the new Ultimate books."

- Tim Story said that The Thing WILL NOT be entirely done in CGI like The Hulk. He said that he doesn't want his actors to constantly have to interact with props, he wants the heart of Chiklis' Ben Grimm to really show through the tough exterior of The Thing, and the only way to do that is to have Chiklis actually there as The Thing. He also went on to say that Chiklis would be in the makeup chair, and would be in full "Thing gear" whenever possible....other shots would of course be CGI, but either way you will really get a feel for The Things power.

- Chiklis said "I can't wait for you guys to see what they've come up with for The Thing...it's so amazing...I wish you would see it right now!". He went on to say that unlike The Hulk, he would be in the make up chair for "many, many hours". To prepare right now, he is reading to his children with his "Thing teeth" in his mouth to practice sounding out different words.

- Tim Story added that ontop of the designs for the F4, the look they've decided on for Dr. Doom was "awesome." Story said that in keeping with the original look, it is much more "sinister" looking, which he said was fitting for one of the greatest villains of all time.

- One fan asked if Dr. Doom's real name would be "Victor Von Doom" (like it is in the original books), or Victor Van Damme (like it is in the Ultimate F4 books). Tim Story replied by saying "our characters name is Victor VON DOOM"....the crowd seemed to like that a lot.

- Ioan Gruffudd said that although he wasn't a fan of the original F4 books, he has been reading A LOT of them in order to get a better feel for exactly who Reed Richards is, and how he goes from being a brilliant scientist to the leader of the F4. Jessica, and Michael also added that they have been reading the F4 books to better prepare for their roles.

- Avi Arad and Tim Story both said that the set for the Baxter Building is "simply amazing."

- A fan asked if they had found their Dr. Doom yet, to which Tim Story replied "you'll be hearing an announcement in about a week"...no hints as to who it is other than that "the fans will be pleased."

- Ralph Winter, Avi Arad, and Tim Story addressed the question of whether or not the story would be based on the classic books or the new Ultimate books by saying..."both are great books, the classic has so much heart and feeling to it, while the new Ultimate book gives the story a fresh new feeling, and brings it into today's setting"...basically it'll be a mix of both.

No footage was shown (since there isn't any), and no designs were unveiled, but you could see Avi Arad wearing a "Fantastic 4" hat with a new "updated" logo...no word on if this was the official or not. The logo was very simple, think Spider-Man the Movie style writing with the number 4 being punched out of a circle.

- Avi Arad did mention that F4 was initially supposed to come out before Blade, Spider-Man, X-Men...etc, but due to some "problems" that obviously didn't happen. He said he is glad they waited since their goal is to present the F4 the in a way we all would expect..."with Fantastic FX!"

Overall the panel was good. Production is set to begin in the next few weeks over in Vancouver for a summer 2005 release date. Everyone seemed very excited about the movie, and their respective roles, but the absolute best part of the entire panel was when Michael Chiklis came out (with figure in hand) and said "It's clobberin' time!"...the voice sounded great, and the fans went NUTS! (myself included).
 
 
FinderWolf
18:08 / 03.08.04
Cinescape says... Nip/Tuck and former Charmed star Julian McMahon has been cast to play Dr. Doom in the upcoming Fantastic Four movie according to Variety.
 
 
Brigade du jour
11:12 / 04.08.04
Oh. Dear.

Well ok, I've only half-watched a couple of part-episodes of semi-Charmed but he seems a bit stiff and wooden.

Maybe that's what Doom needs though.
 
 
gridley
12:37 / 04.08.04
I actually quite enjoy Julian's acting. Even with my addiction to any supernatural programming on television, he and Rose Mcgowan were the only reasons I could stand the rest of the show.

My only fear is that they won't bother to give his character any complexity in the script.
 
 
FinderWolf
14:15 / 04.08.04
I kind of feel that anyone who's been on CHARMED must suck, but maybe that's unfair to say. However, Nip/Tuck has a great reputation, so hopefully he's decent.
 
 
Brigade du jour
17:58 / 04.08.04
If anyone wants a bit of a giggle regarding FF casting, or indeed a bit of jaw-dropping dumbfoundedness, go here:

Don't try and read the whole thing though, it may hurt.
 
 
Issaiah Saysir
18:44 / 04.08.04
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?

I have a copy on DVD believe it or not. Have I watched it? No. The Thing's foam rubber suit is just too much to bear.
 
 
Our Lady Has Left the Building
06:26 / 05.08.04
Lord Morgue Oh please, please PLEASE let them NOT go with this Ultimates Van Damme bullshit. I have nightmares about Doom doing the box splits, helicopter kicking Ben Grimm, and he keeps taking his pants off to show Sue "Thees line on my leg that onlee a bodeebuilder has."

Yes, because as everyone in the world has a unique last name that they don't share with anyone else, calling the character 'Van Damme' would obviously mean that the character of Doctor Doom would then have to be played by Jean-Claude Van Damme. On that logic the film has come unstuck because I've not been able to find any actors called Ben Grimm or Reed Richards, although we do have a Sue Storm and the Human Torch would appear to be dead.
 
 
FinderWolf
18:35 / 22.09.04
pic of Alba in the suit - I'm not normally an Alba-drooler, but she looks quite good:

http://www.usatoday.com/life/movies/news/2004-09-20-fantastic4_x.htm
 
 
FinderWolf
18:36 / 22.09.04
Reed! http://antiherocomics.com/images/MrFantastic.jpg
 
 
FinderWolf
18:38 / 22.09.04
The Thing!

http://antiherocomics.com/images/TheThing.jpg

(sorry, sneaking this in quick at work and don't have time to make proper links)
 
 
Aertho
20:18 / 22.09.04
I think the Thing looks TERRIBLE. May they lay hours of CGI upon him.
 
 
diz
20:24 / 22.09.04
[b]I think the Thing looks TERRIBLE. May they lay hours of CGI upon him.[/b]

no! then he'll look like the Hulk did. better have him look like he does now than have him be a cartoon.
 
 
Tamayyurt
22:23 / 22.09.04
I think the Thing looks pretty good from the neck down... the face is all wrong though.

I really like the costume design. The material actually looks like it would be make of unstable molecules and stuff.
 
 
phrankphutta
02:04 / 23.09.04
Thing would look a lot better if they added some bigass motorized eyebrows on there. I probably won't see this movie, but only because I've never really thought the book was any good.
 
 
FinderWolf
14:29 / 23.09.04
Harry at aint it cool had these thoughts, which mostly echoed mine...I don't mind Sue being Hot with a capital H instead of MILF type, but why not have Johnny Storm be blonde so you can quickly tell him apart from Reed? And I agree that the Thing looks pretty ehhhh -- hopefully they CGI-enhance him slightly. Or maybe the fan complaints about the pic (mostly his lack of strong big eyebrows) might inspire the studio to tweak the design a little bit.

>> Where's Storm's blonde lockes? I know that's a detail, but at least looking at these early pics, wouldn't it be sweet if visually you instantly could tell the difference between the two white guys without having to read captions? I'm willing to bet that's part of the reason his hair was blonde in the book, and to just instantly create that connection to his sister, Sue... Speaking of, Alba is hot, no doubt, but she looks like a slutty stripper Sue. Not the wholesome Martha Stewart-Jackie Kennedy adventurer. She just looks wrong, hot, but wrong.
 
 
FinderWolf
14:34 / 19.10.04
fun quote from an interview at Superhero Hype about the casting of the FF movie - we have Jennifer Garner to thank for Chiklis as The Thing!

>> Chiklis: I met this gentleman (Arad) at a party and Jennifer Garner actually introduced us and I said, 'I have two words for you, Ben Grimm', and that was the beginning of it.
 
 
Regrettable Juvenilia
14:45 / 19.10.04
Harry Knowles should not be allowed to express an opinion on the subject of women ever again.
 
 
Rawk'n'Roll
17:09 / 19.10.04
Whilst I don't like the design of the Thing I must admit he's very "classic" and Kirby-esque looking.

But why is Johnny older than Reed? He's greying fr gods sake!
 
 
FinderWolf
18:42 / 19.10.04
yeah, the Thing looks more like the very very early issues where he was more blobby/muddy than rocky (John Byrne, back when he was more sane and not a hack, reverted ol' Benjy to this state for a while during his wonderful FF run). The movie Thing look is growing on me. And Chiklis is wonderfully cast, methinks.
 
 
chairmanWOW
06:51 / 17.11.04
Aai Pappi!!!

What's next? Whoopi Goldberg playing The Wasp in the Avengers movie, Lisa Kudrow stepping into Halle Berry's size-whatevers in X-Men 3?

Wasn't Sue Storm and Johnny Storm kinda related in the comics? Sorta hard to picture that with the invisible woman looking a bit south of the border these days...

Damn Hollywood for getting all United Colors of Bennetton on the Fantastic Fours ass...
 
 
FinderWolf
14:05 / 23.11.04
it's here, a scan from Entertainment Weekly of Doc Doom in costume - it's a decent pic but hard to tell how cheesy it might be...

Here
 
 
Regrettable Juvenilia
20:09 / 23.11.04
I'm just as annoyed by the predictability of this as anyone else, but nobody else stepped up (I guess the wisest 'Lithers avoid a thread like this altogether), so here goes:

CroMagnet, you are an odious fuckwit.
 
 
FinderWolf
19:15 / 28.12.04
THE INCREDIBLES influencing the ending of the FF movie...

from Cinescape.com:

As principal photography on 20th Century Fox's FANTASTIC FOUR winds down, we've been hearing stories about a last-minute change of plans that happened with the film -- and it's all due to another superhero movie called THE INCREDIBLES.

Two sources have now independently told us that the entire third act of FANTASTIC FOUR has undergone extensive changes as a result of Disney and Pixar's CGI family film THE INCREDIBLES. As it happens, we're told that once the creative FF team saw the stretching effects of the INCREDIBLES character Elastigirl, the final battle we're yet to see in FANTASTIC FOUR needed to be beefed up, especially what the character of Mister Fantastic was slated to do.

Here's what we're told: already burdened with a nine figure budget, and with five main characters all gifted with their own special powers (and thus their own expensive slate of special effects required to bring them to life), one of the ways to reduce the FANTASTIC FOUR expenses was to limit the time that Mister Fantastic would use his stretching abilities on the screen. However, once THE INCREDIBLES blasted on the scene, and audiences got a taste of what kind of things a human Mom could do with her super-stretching powers, the makers of FANTASTIC FOUR soon realized that they would have to push the envelope further. But how could they do that when the budget for FF was already well past $100 million dollars?

The answer turned out to be quite simple: 20th Century Fox stepped up to the plate and coughed up more dough. How much more is a matter of conjecture...but we've heard a check as big as $20 M may have been written by Fox just so FANTASTIC FOUR's Mister Fantastic could have more screen time to stretch across. Before you begin believinbg that FANTASTIC FOUR will be the mother of all stretching movies, that $20 M may not all go to just making Reed Richards stretch further than he was originally intended to do in the first place. After all, there's also the Human Torch, Invisible Woman, the Thing and Doctor Doom too...

It also turns out, in this post-INCREDIBLES landscape, that the third act of FANTASTIC FOUR had to undergo a major rewrite. We've heard stories of the writers and producers working overtime all through November and December as they thought about ways to ratchet up the film's final battles and the resolution. This has supposedly made for some frought moments as the script changed, almost daily -- and word has it, the changes made were to distance the FANTASTIC FOUR ending from that of THE INCREDIBLES.

Don't think just yet that all of this creative strife means the end result will be lacking; even while filming many productions undergo major changes to their storylines, sometimes requiring delays in filming as the script undergoes revisions. Entire sequences may be axed for any number of reasons while brand new scenes may be born as a result of adversity -- and if the film stands on its own, audiences will never know how many nights of sleep the cast, crew, director and producers lost. All final judgements on the merits of FANTASTIC FOUR will have to wait until opening day arrives.
 
 
FinderWolf
20:16 / 29.12.04
Stan Lee as Willy Lumpkin!

No, seriously!

from Cinescape.com today:

>> Did Stan Lee ever dream of the day when he might star in the FANTASTIC FOUR movie when he and artist Jack Kirby created the world's greatest comic magazine? If Lee ever did, that dream has come true already: the legendary writer of some of Marvel Comics' greatest books has filmed a cameo appearance in Fox's FF film. With his cameos in X-MEN, DAREDEVIL and THE HULK, Lee's appearances in the big-screen Marvel movies have become something audiences have come to keep an eye out for when the next Marvel movie hits theater screens.

>> Yahoo Movies has posted a seven minute video clip showing Lee's trip to the set and filming of the mega-budgeted picture behind-the-scenes. As you'll see, Lee plays the part of the mailman for the Baxter Building (old school FANTASTIC FOUR comic readers will know the character's name is Willy Lumpkin), and during his scene he gets to greet and hand the mail to a smiling Reed Richards (Ioan Gruffuld). It looks like Lee may actually get to speak some dialogue in the film!

>> The movie opens on July 1, 2005.
 
 
FinderWolf
17:26 / 03.01.05
I just was about to cut & paste a cinescape article saying that a trailer for the FF film will likely be attached to ELEKTRA when it opens, but for some reason, my cut & paste doesn't seem to be working today, which is bizarre. I wonder if it's my computer... or Barbelith. It's been working mostly on other things I've been doing today...
 
 
FinderWolf
13:37 / 21.01.05
anyone see the new FF trailer online or in the theaters? Reviews seem lukewarm across the fanboy board...
 
 
Triplets
14:12 / 21.01.05
Ugh, nu-rock. That seemed less like a trailer and more like a film students idea of what one should look like.

Scratch that, it was just too dull to look like anything really. A bored expression rather than a flash of ankle, come hither teaserage. It just sort of lay there.

Knee jerk reactions: Doom looks too camp. The only thing good about RR is the hair, the face is too bewildered. Reed would been fascinated by his elasticity.

And Johnny Storm looks like the casting director replaced 'fiery, blond, rebellious daredevil' with 'has head'.

Oh, and Sue Storm should've SO been played by Amanda Tapping: . Smart and sexy. Just like me. And our glorious super-children.

Excelsior!
 
 
grime
17:51 / 21.01.05
The Incredibles was great, and it was so heavily inspired by the ff, I feel like someone already made a great ff movie. Just replace blue suits with red.

the 60's camp and design elements, high-tech badguy, signature superpowers, family hijinx.

It seems like a hard act to follow.
 
 
Pants Payroll
03:39 / 22.01.05
Stan Lee is rolling in cash. He gets "10% of the profits derived during his life by Marvel from profits of any live-action or animated television or movie productions utilizing Marvel characters." Article here. Too bad it couldnt have been Jack Kirby instead.
 
  

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