Adrien Brody or Jonathan Rhys Meyers will play Mr. Fantastic in the upcoming Fantastic Four reboot, ScreenRant reports.
Would you believe there was once a time when comic book movies were considered B-movie fodder? Now they’re on top of the world, and lest our drastically limited attention-spans sputter out completely, Hollywood has deemed frequent franchise reboots the best way to keep our attention. In the wake of Christopher Nolan hand in the buzzy reboot of Superman, the franchise restarters X-Men: First Class and a new Spider-Man – complete with new directors and casts – the latest Marvel title to catch the reboot bug is Fantastic Four.
The two frontrunners for the role of Reed Richards – the genius scientist who gains the ability to become ultra-elastic and takes the name Mr. Fantastic – are Adrien Brody and Jonathan Rhys Meyers. With Brody now a hot property in the wake of Predators and Splice and Meyers a pay-cable favorite thanks to Showtime’s The Tudors, this could be an interesting signal of the kind of film Fox will be serving up – according to some sources, in the summer of 2012. Both actors are charismatic leading men and good choices for the role – personally, I’d like to see Brody as Mr. Fantastic, and watch Meyers tear it up as Dr. Doom, maybe. Meyers has an edgy malevolence to him, while keeping his characters resolutely human and sympathetic – like the cheating husband in Match Point.
After the hit X-Men series, Marvel properties have been all the rage. DC titles may have the platinum-grade and utterly immortal Batman and Superman, but Marvel has the diversity – and overlapping universes – of The Uncanny X-Men, Spider-Man, Fantastic Four, and The Avengers – which include Captain America, Iron Man, and Thor, all of which have been opened up into promising franchises, with Iron Man of course leading the way. A Fantastic Four reboot was to be expected, especially with the former Johnny Storm, Chris Evans to portray Captain America. The odds that Evans continue to play Johnny Storm aka The Human Torch were always slim-to-none.
The two previous Fantastic Four films grossed a combined worldwide total of $618,795,038, with the first installment earning more than its weirdly good/bad sequel, Rise of the Silver Surfer, wherein Laurence Fishburne voiced the intergalactic herald of the planet-devouring Galactus. Both films garnered tepid reviews, and while I liked them, they were burdened by underwhelming scripts and a heavy reliance on rather cheesy CGI. The addition of some classy, Oscar-winning blood to this series could hopefully lead to something similar to the Iron Man movies – a character-based approach, with the special effects serving the story, instead of the other way around.
No word on writers or directors yet, but there’s plenty to be hopeful about. The Fantastic Four share the same core idea with Iron Man – the fact that there are no secret identities here. The Four – Reed Richards, his wife Sue Storm (rumor has it Alice Eve and Amber Heard are in the running), his buddy Ben Grimm, aka The Thing (which will be entirely computer generated this time, according to sources inside the Fox VFX department) and Sue’s younger brother Johnny “The Human Torch” Storm – are associated with their superhero identities from the start, just as Tony Stark and Iron Man are “one in the same.” We’ll keep our eyes peeled for more info – this could be a good one.
Who would you rather see as Mr. Fantastic, Adrien Brody or Jonathan Rhys Meyers?