Monday, April 21, 2014

Fantastic Four Reboot: Kinberg Talks Tone, Cross-Over Potential

Attending WonderCon to promote "X-Men Days of Future Past" writer/producer Simon Kinberg talked with Crave about the upcoming  "Fantastic Four" reboot--which he's also involved in.


The comic book series follows four individuals--Reed Richards--Mr. Fantastic (Miles Teller), Sue Storm --The Invisible Girl (Kate Mara), her brother Johnny Storm--The Human Torch (Fruitvale Station star Michael B. Jordan), and Ben Grimm The Thing (Jamie Bell) who gained superpowers after exposure to cosmic rays during a scientific mission to outer space.

Kinberg says the tone of the new movies is "much more grounded, gritty, realistic movie than the last couple movies," however it won't be Christopher Nolan-style Batman trilogy serious:

"If I had to say, the tone of it would be somewhere on the spectrum between [Sam Raimi's] 'Spider-Man ' and 'Chronicle'. The other movies were even further on the spectrum of being goofy and fun than Spider-Man. It's still in the direction of Spider-Man. It's not like Dark Knight. And even Chronicle has a lot of fun in it. We're treating this as the origin of the Fantastic Four so in future movies you'd have them on sort of splashier adventures to some extent, but in this one we tried to ground the science as much as possible and make it feel like it could take place in our world before it cantilevers into other worlds."

Saoirse Ronan ("The Host")  Margot Robbie  "Girls" star Allison Williams were rumored to be circling Invisible Girl last year. Samira Wiley also denied Sue chatter. Mara and Emmy Rossum were said to have both tested for Sue Storm; Christian Cooke was eyed for Grimm. Actor Josh Gad was rumored as well but that talk was denied via Twitter

Toby Kebbell has won the role of bad guy  Doctor Doom He beat out Domhnall Gleeson, Eddie Redmayne, Sam Riley and Jack Huston for the part.

Doom is the son of a gypsy woman who ends up the ruler of a fictional country named Latveria. His character history includes attending university with Reed Richards, the man who will become the leader of the Fantastic Four Like Richards, he is a genius but with an unchecked ego.

The Nerdist reports that: "Doombots will definitely be in the film, in the form of drones that the good Doctor controls telekinetically."

First introduced in 1965, the DoomBots are robotic duplicates of Doctor Doom which he used to do battle. Over the years they've taken on various forms, which version we'll see in the film is uknown at present.

Julian McMahon played the character as Victor Von Doom in the previous big screen incarnations

Simon Kinberg ("Sherlock Holmes," "X-Men: Days of Future Past") recently finished scripting duties. Jeremy Slater was hired to pen the previous script draft.--that Seth Grahame-Smith polished. Michael Green ("Green Lantern") also wrote a draft as well.

"Chronicle" director Josh Trank is set to helm the pic.

"X-Men: First Class" and "Kick-Ass" director Matthew Vaughn signed on to produce the reset

The leads were previously portrayed by Ioan Gruffudd, Jessica Alba, Chris Evans and Michael Chiklis. The first Fantastic Four in 2005 and its sequel 4: Rise of the Silver Surfer in 2007--both helmed by Tim Story--grossed $620 million despite awful reviews (I liked em both!)

Fox wants to restore some credibility and quality to the property, that is currently targeting a June 19th 2015 release. Vancouver has lost out on the shoot for the upcoming reboot. The film's production will now take place in Louisiana due to tax incentives in place.

While Spidey film series producer Avi Arad says that there are no plans to crossover Andrew Garfield's Spider-Man with other superheroes Kinberg isn't against the idea:

"The dream is, obviously, one day to do a Marvel movie that is with all the Marvel characters or at least a universe where they can dive in and out of one another's films. Because that's the way the comics were created, I think that's the way the movies should actually be. For a series of business reasons, they aren't. That's not for narrative or creative reasons. The dream is that we could cross-pollenate and everyone would be building off the momentum of each other, which is what actually happens. We're not in competition with each other. We actually can be helping the cause for all these different movies. It's been shown that audiences have enough of a palate for them. We will have, within the span of a month and a half, "Captain America 2," "Spider-Man 2" and "Days of Future Past." I would hazard to say -- touch wood -- they'll be three of -- let's not be too aggressive -- ten of the biggest movies of the summer. They'll probably be three of the top five or six most successful. It'd be cool if, yeah, one day we could do that. Maybe it starts with us and "Spider-Man." Maybe it goes into sort of a TV show something at some point where the stakes are slightly lower. Then, eventually, you could build toward a shared movie."

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