There have been three Fantastic Four movies - four if you count the one that was never "officially" released - and they've all pitted Marvel's First Family against Doctor Doom.
It's no wonder then that Victor Von Doom is being left on the shelf in The Fantastic Four: First Steps. Had plans for the Multiverse Saga not changed so drastically (with Avengers: The Kang Dynasty becoming Avengers: Doomsday), the team would have likely faced him in a sequel.
Instead, their clash will come next summer when this team assembles alongside the rest of the Multiverse Saga's Mightiest Heroes. In Avengers: Doomsday and Avengers: Secret Wars, Robert Downey Jr. will play Doom.
Talking to Entertainment Weekly, filmmaker Matt Shakman explained why Galactus was prioritised over Victor in The Fantastic Four: First Steps.
"Doom's a great character, but he takes up a lot of air," the director tells the site. "Other film adaptations have done both an origin story and Doom. We're doing neither, and that allows us to look at them from a fresh perspective."
Galactus is a very different type of villainm and Shakman set out to avoid heading down the expected route with Ralph Ineson's Devourer of Worlds.
"I didn't want to just use motion-capture for Galactus. I wanted to actually have someone there embodying the part," Shakman confirms. "So we've built an entire costume for him, and we've done a lot of photography testing to figure out, How do you make sure that the scale is correct? How do you film Mount Rushmore?"
As for what Reed Richards makes of this new threat, Pedro Pascal teases, "It is definitely a scale of threat which Reed has never experienced. Even the smartest man in the world is awestruck by a being that outdates his understanding of time."
Elsewhere in the interview, the actor talked about living up to what fans expect from Mister Fantastic. "It was really intimidating. I relied on the people that I was around to hold me to the experience and help get me through it."
"Stepping into something like Game of Thrones and then going into the early days of Netflix with Narcos and then Star Wars and the world of video games with The Last of Us, each time I've felt like I couldn't top how intimidating the last one was."
"They're all scary because you really want to make people happy, especially if it's something that's widely known with particular expectations around it because you want those expectations to be met," Pascal continued. "You also want to be authentic to yourself so that it can be the best that it can be for anybody who wants to be entertained by a story and travel with us into this world.
The Fantastic Four: First Steps is set to be released in theaters on July 25, 2025. Check out some new stills from the movie below.