Among fandoms, the term “reboot” is just the shorthand for describing a new take on a material that can potentially revive a property, but in regards to the upcoming The Fantastic Four from Marvel Studios, star of 2015’s Fantastic Four Jamie Bell distinctly thinks the word “reboot” shouldn’t be applied. The actor joked that, with his movie failing to make much of an impact on audiences, the new movie isn’t “rebooting” anything that he was involved in. Even if the new film isn’t a reboot, per se, his costar Kate Mara pointed out the Marvel Cinematic Universe has assembled an impressive cast. The Fantastic Four is expected to hit theaters on July 25, 2025.
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“It doesn’t feel like a reboot to me because to reboot something it had to have been something. Unfortunately, our film doesn’t exist in any particular canon,” Bell joked to Variety. “It does exist in one particular canon, which is the not very good canon.”
Mara expressed her interest in the upcoming movie, noting, “We’re excited … It’s a great cast.”
In The Fantastic Four, Vanessa Kirby will be taking Mara’s role of Sue Storm while Ebon Moss-Bachrach will take over Bell’s role of Benn Grimm. Also starring in the film are Pedro Pascal as Reed Richards, Joseph Quinn as Johnny Storm, Ralph Ineson as Galactus, and Paul Walter Hauser, Natasha Lyonne, and Julia Garner in undisclosed roles.
While Bell’s comments were made in jest, they do raise an interesting point about what it means to be a “reboot,” especially in regards to the Fantastic Four and their live-action history.
In 1994, a low-budget The Fantastic Four movie was made for the sole purpose of producer Bernd Eichinger retaining the rights to the characters, with the movie never earning an official release. Thanks to the success of movies like X-Men and Spider-Man, a market was proven for Marvel heroes to make the jump to the big screen, resulting in the 2005 movie Fantastic Four, which starred Chris Evans and Jessica Alba. This adaptation was enough of a success to earn the 2007 sequel Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer.
With the MCU officially launching in 2008, rights issues prevented the Fantastic Four from appearing in Marvel Studios projects, and similarly to the first The Fantastic Four, the Josh Trank-directed Fantastic Four seemed to largely be motivated by the desire for the studio to retain the rights to the character as opposed to knowing how best to utilize them. Even with that film also starring Miles Teller and Michael B. Jordan, it failed to impress audiences or critics, as it took in only $168 million worldwide and sits at 9% positive reviews on aggregator site Rotten Tomatoes.
To Bell’s point, the upcoming The Fantastic Four marks the fourth adaptation of these characters into a live-action movie, as opposed to a project attempting to revive a specific story or character dynamics.
The Fantastic Four is expected to hit theaters on July 25, 2025.
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