“Fantastic Four” Cast Adds Paul Walter Hauser
The great Paul Walter Hauser is headed to the MCU to join one of Marvel’s most anticipated films-in-progress.
The Hollywood Reporter has confirmed that Hauser is joining the cast of The Fantastic Four, joining Pedro Pascal as Reed Richards/Mr. Fantastic, Vanessa Kirby as Sue Storm/The Invisible Woman, Joseph Quinn as Johnny Storm/The Human Torch, Ebon Moss-Bachrach as Ben Grimm/The Thing, and Julia Garner as the Silver Surfer.
It’s not yet clear who Hauser will be playing, but he’s certainly joining one of Marvel’s hottest properties and a film MCU fans have been waiting for now for years. Director Matt Shakman is helping the studio reboot the franchise, thanks to Disney’s acquisition of 21st Century Fox back in 2019, the previous studio that owned the rights to Marvel’s first superhero family. Marvel’s new-look Four will differ in tone, substance, and style from the three films Fox produced—Fantastic Four (2005), Fantastic Four: The Rise of the Silver Surfer (2007), and a reboot, Fantastic Four (2015). Shakman, coming off his impressive run helming Marvel Studios’ WandaVision on Disney+, directs from a script by Black Widow and Thor: Ragnarok scribe Eric Pearson, based on the iconic characters created by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby for Marvel Comics back in 1961.
When Marvel teased the film with this illustration, it helped kickstart speculation on exactly what kind of film this new Four would be.
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By the clues embedded in the illustration, the new Fantastic Four looks like it will be set, at least partially, in the 1960s. Check out the Life Magazine that Ben Grimm is reading—it’s from December 1963. It’s not for nothing that Shakman proved so capable of capturing the 60s with his stellar period work in WandaVision.
If The Fantastic Four is indeed set in the 1960s, that means it’ll exist apart from what’s going on right now in the major MCU timelines, possibly in a parallel world, considering we haven’t heard about them in any of the MCU films (you think someone like Nick Fury would have mentioned them by now), save for a brief moment in Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness when John Krasinski appeared as his world’s Rex Reed (it didn’t end well for him, thanks to a very pissed off Wanda Maximoff.) This will offer Marvel and Shakman something of a blank canvas, manna from heaven for filmmakers and performers looking to make the film their own. Sure, Marvel will connect The Fantastic Four to the broader MCU, with 2027’s Avengers: Secret Wars as the most likely convergence point for the Fantastic Four to merge with the rest of the franchise if they follow the storyline from the “Secret Wars” comics run from 2015. Yet, for now, setting the film in the 1960s and giving the characters the literal time and space to do their own thing sounds like a great plan for Marvel.
The Fantastic Four is slated to hit theaters on July 25, 2025.
For more on The Fantastic Four, check out these stories:
Marvel’s “The Fantastic Four” Casts Julia Garner as Silver Surfer
Marvel’s “Fantastic Four” in Full Swing With a Director & Writers On Board
Marvel’s “Fantastic Four” Eyeing Pedro Pascal to Play Mr. Fantastic
Featured image: An illustration shared by Marvel Studios on Valentine’s Day, 2024. Courtesy Marvel Studios
