This Comedy Duo Has Been Chosen to Write the MCU’s ‘Fantastic Four’

Marvel’s long awaited Fantastic Four movie is starting to come together! The film was announced at San Diego Comic-Con as part of the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s Phase 6, but there aren’t many details available yet, with no casting announcements so far and filming still a long way off. At Disney’s D23 Expo, Kevin Feige announced that Matt Shakman would be directing the movie, and now, according to a new Deadline report, Jeff Kaplan and Ian Springer have been tapped to write the script.

Interestingly, Kaplan and Springer have a background in comedy writing. The pair co-wrote Bert and Arnie’s Guide to Friendship (2013), a story about two men who become friends when one sleeps with the other’s wife. The duo also have two movies currently in development. Disaster Wedding, in development at Warner Brothers, which has Palm Springs director Max Barbakow attached to direct, and K-Pop: Lost in America, which will star Rebel Wilson and Charles Melton.

Marvel’s upcoming film won’t be the Fantastic Four‘s first appearance on the big screen. In 2005, 20th Century Fox released Fantastic Four, starring Ioan Gruffud as Reed Richards, Jessica Alba as Sue Storm, Michael Chiklis as Ben Grimm, and the MCU’s own Chris Evans as Johnny Storm. That film gave rise to a sequel, Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer, and in 2015, Fox rebooted the franchise with another movie called Fantastic Four, which was widely considered a flop.

Although Fox’s films aren’t part of the MCU, Reed Richards does have a cameo in the MCU’s Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, in which Strange travels to an alternate universe called Earth-838 and finds that Richards (John Krasinski) is a member of the Illuminati. Right now, it’s not clear whether the new Fantastic Four film will build on Krasinski’s Doctor Strange 2 cameo or depart from it entirely, perhaps even casting another actor as Reed Richards.

Kevin Feige did reveal one detail about the film at SDCC 2022, where he told The Hollywood Reporter that Fantastic Four won’t explore the team’s origin story. Feige explained that Marvel is looking to bring something new to the screen instead, telling THR that “A lot of people know this origin story. A lot of people know the basics. How do we take that and bring something that they’ve never seen before?”

The new Fantastic Four is currently slated to premiere on November 8, 2024, where it will kick off the MCU’s Phase 6 after Phase 5 concludes with the 2024 antihero team-up Thunderbolts.

(featured image: Marvel)