The Fantastic Four: First Steps fast approaches, with the first Marvel Studios Fantastic Four title coming on the tenth anniversary of the last time a Fantastic Four motion picture graced movie theaters. 2015’s Fantastic Four, directed by Josh Trank, was an infamous disaster that not even the movie star charisma of Michael B. Jordan could salvage. Drowning in a grim atmosphere and devoid of much idiosyncratic personality, not to mention featuring a plethora of poorly executed visual effects shots, Fantastic Four was a comic book movie failure for all of eternity.
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Before the final product hit the big screen and became a pop culture nightmare, though, Fantastic Four was a major new superhero movie tentpole. Inevitably, that means a deluge of high-profile actors were once attached to the project. Who wouldn’t, after all, want to star in the latest Marvel adaptation from the X-Men studio? Looking back ten years later, the “what if?” casting scenarios around these proposed Fantastic Four cast members are fascinating. None of them could’ve realized at the time what a tremendous bullet they dodged!
Josh Gad as Ben Grimm/The Thing
At the dawn of 2014, an unexpected name for Fantastic Four’s version of Ben Grimm/The Thing emerged: Josh Gad. Just a few weeks before this news broke, Gad reached a new level of stardom with his work as Olaf the Snowman in Frozen. Meanwhile, he’d previously worked with 20th Century Fox on the comedies The Rocker and The Internship. Gad’s comedic experience makes it easy to see why he could’ve been viewed as a candidate for The Thing. However, he lacks the character’s innate gruffness, while Gad being 32 when this news broke meant he was a bit old to portray a supposed High School version of The Thing. Trank would quickly step out to confirm this casting wasn’t happening, thus ensuring future Frozen/Fantastic Four mash-ups would never happen.
One fun fact: if this casting had ever happened, Gad would’ve beaten 2025’s Ebon Moss-Bachrach as the first actor of Jewish descent to portray the openly Jewish superhero The Thing!
Kit Harington as Reed Richards/Mr. Fantastic
Long before Dane Whitman in Eternals was on his radar, Kit Harington was allegedly one of the people testing out for the role of Reed Richards in Fantastic Four. This news broke less than three years after Harington exploded as an actor thanks to Game of Thrones, making it easy to see why he’d be on Fox’s radar. Eventually, though, Trank and company would opt for Miles Teller (a veteran of early 2010s High School movies) instead of embracing Jon Snow for Richards.
[Related: How Have Tim Story’s Two Fantastic Four Movies Aged?]
Saoirse Ronan as Sue Storm/The Invisible Woman
Back in 2013, another name reported as testing for a lead Fantastic Four role was Saoirse Ronan as Sue Storm/The Invisible Woman. Already an Oscar nominee for Atonement, Ronan could’ve instantly lent Fantastic Four a layer of prestige rather than just being seen as a cash-grab remake. Kate Mara would later garner this role. This also wouldn’t be the first time that Ronan’s name was circulating when it came to superhero roles. At the end of the 2010s, Ronan would be rumored as one of the finalists to play Yelena in Black Widow, though that would be the end of her connections to superhero fare. In October 2024, Ronan openly said she couldn’t see herself in superhero movies.
Margot Robbie as Sue Storm/The Invisible Woman
Kyle Buchanan’s 2022 book Blood, Sweat & Chrome: The Wild and True Story of Mad Max: Fury Road features a fun anecdote where a casting director recalls how Margot Robbie delivered a killer audition for one of Immortan Joe’s wives. Apparently, it was one of many amazing auditions Robbie was nailing back in the early 2010s. Her connection to high-profile movie roles was reinforced through Robbie being an early frontrunner for this version of Sue Storm. This news broke months before Robbie’s breakthrough role in The Wolf of Wall Street. She didn’t even need to appear in a Martin Scorsese movie to get considered for a major superhero feature role!
Eddie Redmayne as Victor von Doom/Doctor Doom
Less than a year after his Les Miserables supporting turn immediately made him a hot commodity, Eddie Redmayne became one of the four finalists for Victor von Doom/Doctor Doom in Trank’s Fantastic Four. In hindsight, that’s an interesting bit of potential casting since it suggests an alternate casting future for Redmayne. After winning an Oscar for The Theory of Everything, Redmayne would play heroic characters in titles like the Fantastic Beasts movies or The Aeronauts. If he had been selected for Doctor Doom, though, Redmayne could’ve gone down the route of so many other British actors and become a go-to figure for roguish baddies in American genre movies. Ultimately, Trank and company opted for Toby Kebbell for this incarnation of Doctor Doom.
A Potential Lady Actor as Victor von Doom
Here’s a slightly more esoteric bit of alternate Fantastic Four casting: a rumor circulated online that 20th Century Fox was open to casting a woman as Victor von Doom. The mind reels at the talented ladies who could’ve been attached to an iteration of the villain that, in its final form, had nothing special to do. Like the concept of Gad playing The Thing, this was another rumor Trank squashed quite quickly on social media. However, the rumor’s existence suggests what a strange creative gestation Fantastic Four had. Actor ambitions and concrete character details were left so nebulous that even a famous comic book villain almost got a gender swap.
As for the latest take on Marvel’s First Family, The Fantastic Four: First Steps will star Pedro Pascal as Reed Richards, Vanessa Kirby as Sue Storm, Joseph Quinn as Johnny Storm, and Ebon Moss-Bachrach as Ben Grimm. The film opens in theaters July 25th.
