Why John Malkovich was cut off from Fantastic Four of Marvel: First Steps

As a first true appearance of fantasy oven in the Marvel cinematographic universe, there is a lot of driving on “The Fantastic Four: First Steps”. The film would be one of Marvel Honcho Kevin Feige’s main priorities while the studio brings the heterogeneous crew of Mister Fantastic, the Invisible Woman, Johnny Storm, and the thing for life after a series of average attempts to other societies.

Taking up in a universe separated from the rest of the MCU, “The Fantastic Four: First Steps” has many characters to present, including their herbie robot Herbie, the enigmatic silver surfer and the nasty eater of planet, galactus. This new pocket universe is full of new characters, but there is one for which the film no longer has a place: the red ghost of John Malkovich.

Malkovich was to appear in an early sequence of the film detailing the origins of the team as a family of crime, leading a team of super-apernes in a battle with the fantastic four for the glory of the USSR. As one of the first villains of the Fantastic Four, appearing for the first time in issue 13, we were able to see a brief overview of the Ghost Red (without super-Aes) in the first trailer of the film, which teased a new mean role to add to the already impressive list of the nasty of the actor, but the director Matt Shakman revealed that Malkovich was reduced Heartbreak “.

With “The Fantastic Four: First Steps” a few days before the release, the director Matt Shakman spoke to Variety of the film and entered the difficulties of gathering a story that had so many different characters to serve:

“There were a lot of things that ended up hitting the floor room. When we built a retro -future world from the 60s, introducing all these bad guys, presenting these four main group characters, as well as individually, presenting the idea of a child – there was a lot to balance in this film and certain things had to go in terms of films for its final version.”

Malkovich had played in Shakman’s first feature film “Cut Bank”, and brought it on board for “The Fantastic Four” gave Malkovich a chance to give a “brilliant” performance for which the film unfortunately no longer has room.

Cut Malkovich from the final version of the film was “heartbreaking” for Shakman, who calls the founder of the Steppenwolf Theater Company “One of [his] very preferred humans and one of the [his] The greatest inspirations. “Fortunately for everyone in the distribution, the Ghost Red is apparently the only character not making the final cup when the film is presented in theaters on July 25, 2025.