Marvel Studios showed some very early footage from The Fantastic Four: First Steps at Comic-Con yesterday (you can read a full description here) and we now have a first look at the MCU's Baxter Building!
The movie, which takes place in a retro-future '60s' setting, doesn't take place on Earth-616. However, with Marvel's First Family confirmed for Avengers: Doomsday and Avengers: Secret Wars, it's clear they're going to play a big role in the Multiverse Saga.
Whether the Sacred Timeline will get its own Baxter Building remains to be seen; we see here just how different the alternate reality New York looks, though, and the team's base is arguably way cooler than Avengers Tower.
Talking to Entertainment Weekly, The Fantastic Four: First Steps director Matt Shakman explained why this movie won't deliver yet another origin story.
"One of the things we decided early on was not to do an origin story," the filmmaker explained. "One of the ways we're making it our own thing is we're not telling the story of them going up and being changed, and starting our story [there]. There's a lot of well-known narrative that leads into that moment, right?"
"And then you're making up your new story starting basically at the end of the first act, and we thought, 'Well, let's just start this thing off on a completely new foot. So we are beginning after that,'" Shakman added before confirming he hasn't watched any of the previous Fantastic Four movies.
"We're really just making our own specific thing. This is no discredit to those movies. But we're telling our own very specific story. Like any great play, you can cast a play with four people, and then recast it with four different people, and it's the same play, but it's a completely different experience."
"Our movie is set in the '60s, kind of a retro-future '60s, and it's a lot about the space race and about voyaging out there," Shakman then said of the reboot's new title. "So First Steps is partly to do with that idea about exploration."
Take a closer look at The Fantastic Four: First Steps' MCU's Baxter Building below.
Marvel Studios has announced that Pedro Pascal (Reed Richards/Mister Fantastic), Vanessa Kirby (Sue Storm/Invisible Woman), Joseph Quinn (Johnny Storm/Human Torch), and Ebon Moss-Bachrach (Ben Grimm/The Thing) will lead The Fantastic Four: First Steps cast.
We'll also see Ralph Ineson as Galactus, Julia Garner as Shalla-Bal/Silver Surfer, and Paul Walter Hauser, John Malkovich, and Natasha Lyonne in mystery roles. The story sees Galactus and Silver Surfer target Earth for destruction.
Director Matt Shakman worked with both Avatar: The Way of Water co-writer Josh Friedman and WandaVision's Cam Squires on The Fantastic Four: First Steps' screenplay, with Eric Pearson (Black Widow) recently coming on board for a final polish.
The movie is set to be released in theaters on July 25, 2025.