MCU Fantastic Four Star Got Help From a Lord of the Rings Legend for Thing Role

The MCU’s new Ben Grimm got help from one of the industry’s best when preparing for the role — The Lord of the Rings’ Andy Serkis. Serkis became a pioneer in the art of motion-capture acting by playing Gollum, and he continues to work on the process to this day. In an interview on Jimmy Kimmel Live on Tuesday, Moss-Bachrach explained how Serkis helped him become The Thing for Fantastic Four: First Steps, even if he couldn’t see the animation while filming.

“Andy Serkis, who is sort of the Godfather of motion-capture in a way — he’s got this company called The Imaginarium, which is at Pinewood Studio where we shot Fantastic Four,” Moss-Bachrach said. “He was very generous. They have a room that they call the ‘magic mirror’ where you put on the motion capture suit, and you put on sensors, and they set up monitors, and you can see in real time a rendering — kind of a beta rendering, not fully realized, and you can’t see the face too much — but you could see the physics. How big the character is.”

Motion-capture was a relatively new concept when Serkis was cast as Gollum, and The Lord of the Rings trilogy was one of the most extensive uses of it in a popular film at that time. Its success helped spur other productions to use it as well, and many turned to Serkis for his expertise. Serkis would go on to play the part of King Kong in motion-capture, and Caesar in the Planet of the Apes trilogy from 2011 to 2017. He reprised his role as Gollum in The Hobbit trilogy, and played Supreme Leader Snoke in the Star Wars sequel trilogy.

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Serkis co-founded The Imaginarium Studios in 2011, along with film producer Jonathan Cavendish. These days, Serkis is known as a director as much as an actor — he directed and starred in the 2018 adaptation Mowgli: Legend of the Jungle and directed Venom: Let There Be Carnage that same year. Last spring, Warner Bros. announced that Serkis will direct and star in The Lord of the Rings: The Hunt for Gollum — an interquel set during Fellowship of the Ring.

The strength of all this hybrid CGI work is behind Moss-Bachrach, which bodes well for Fantastic Four: First Steps. The movie is not expected to be an origin story for Marvel’s First Family, meaning Grimm will probably be in his stony form for the entire runtime. First Steps hits theaters on July 25, 2025.