Fantastic Four Writer Reveals Surprising Villains Film Initially Had

Long he joined the Marvel Cinematic Universe by leading the writer’s room on Moon Knight, screenwriter Jeremy Slater got a gig penning a a script or two for 20th Century Fox’s last attempt at rebooting the Fantastic Four franchise. While the end result has become one of the most-panned entries in all of superhero cinema — a fact Slater himself realizes all too well — it did initially feature a pair of villains beloved amongst longtime fans of Marvel’s First Family.

As Slater recalls with us, his original draft of the film included a live-action version of both Annihlus and Galactus, but the baddies were quickly cut from the movie so that Dr. Doom could get more of the film’s focus.

“We had Annihilus in my draft of the original Fantastic Four when they went to the Negative Zone for the first time they were attacked,” Slater tells us. “In the very first draft, they were attacked by Galactus and the whole plot, it was Galactus had fired his sort of cosmic radiation through the portal and then you found out Galactus was sort of tracking that radiation back and was on his way to Earth.”

Slater admits the premise was “too much” for the studio, which ordered the writer to pull it back a bit.

“In the second draft, they actually encountered Annihilus and he was 20-feet tall and cybernetic,” the writer adds. “I pitched him as the T-Rex from Jurassic Park and the way he would be sort of hunting and attacking them, and it seemed like he was the one who killed Victor and they barely got back through the portal in time but it felt like a really fun twist or fun way to use Annihilus that we hadn’t seen before.”

Still, the writer is holding out hope to see the character come to fruition eventually.

“For one of a thousand reasons, that was something that got changed in that movie,” Slater concludes. “But the good news is he hasn’t been used yet. He’s still out there, and he’s awesome. So out there I have no doubt Annihilus is showing up at some point, it’s just a question of is he Fantastic Four or is he part of the different cosmic universe MCU stuff? I don’t know.”

Both Fantastic Four and Moon Knight are now streaming on Disney+.

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