February 19, 2014, Hollywood:
According to The Hollywood Reporter, Fox is making deals with Miles Teller, Kate Mara, Michael B. Jordan, and Jamie Bell for the Josh Trank directed upcoming Fantastic Four film reboot.
Rumors have been flying around about the cast for months, with some idiotic controversy over the confirmed casting of Michael B. Jordan as Johnny Storm (aka Human Torch), traditionally the brother of Sue Storm in the comics, because Jordan is African-American and Sue Storm (Invisible Girl) will be Kate Mara, most recently of House of Cards fame, who is Caucasian. Jordan worked with Trank previously in the film Chronicle.
Miles Teller will be portraying Reed Richards (Mr. Fantastic), but according to THR, that is not finalized due to potential scheduling issues. He will be in a John Belushi biopic, whose shooting schedule is one of the projects potentially in conflict.
This leaves Jamie Bell to play Ben Grimm (The Thing), which is interesting casting, as that character is often portrayed pre-transformation as a somewhat buffer character. It will be interesting to see what Trank does with that, or if Bell will bulk up. That said, when you get transformed into a rock man, who's to say you don't bulk up?
The previous version of The Fantastic Four featuring Jessica Alba, Ioan Gruffudd, Chris Evans, and Michael Chiklis, was controversial for a different reason: it was seen by many fans as not very good. Rotten Tomatoes has that film and its sequel, Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer, under 40% ratings, and Box Office Mojo's data on the films shows the first netted a $54 million profit, the second actually lost $1 million, versus their production budgets. Thus, Fox certainly has a lot riding on the success of this new version.
It is also interesting to note that Fox and Trank have a cast decidedly younger than the previous outings, and it will be interesting to see how this plays into the dynamics of the Four, as well as their new origin story and potential future story lines.
with reporting from The Hollywood Reporter, Rotten Tomatoes, Box Office Mojo, and IMDb
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