Despite some oddly persistent complaints about Pedro Pascal's facial hair, most fans are fully on board with The Last of Us star playing The Fantastic Four: First Steps' Reed Richards.
The actor's Hollywood hot streak continues, and before the reboot is even released, Pascal has already been joined by the rest of the MCU's First Family on the set of Avengers: Doomsday (and, presumably, Avengers: Secret Wars when it begins production). With that, he looks set to become a huge part of this franchise.
During a career retrospective with Vanity Fair, Pascal talked about his approach to Mister Fantastic and revealed the one aspect of his performance he was asked to tone down during shooting.
"The theater of that is something to step into. I don't know if I do it well," the ever-humble star of The Mandalorian shared. "They had to keep on pulling me back from a very mid-Atlantic early 60s talk. They had a dialect coach who was going to help us into that kind of dialect."
"I took to it so well, they had to pull me aside...they were like, 'Uh, talk more like yourself.' I had a hard time doing that because I was so into the era, which for me, was something to step into, as it's different from what we've seen before," Pascal noted. "What they've created is something we haven't seen."
It's interesting that Marvel Studios had Pascal pull back on the mid-Atlantic 60s-inspired accent. However, it also makes sense when these characters will be sharing the screen with Earth-616's present-day Avengers in a little over a year from now.
Unless the plan is for the Multiverse to continue post-Secret Wars, the expectation is that the Fantastic Four will eventually inhabit the same reality as the Avengers, X-Men, and Spider-Man. As a result, we'll have a single, cohesive Marvel Cinematic Universe packed with more characters than ever before.
You can hear more from Pascal in the player below (he starts discussing The Fantastic Four: First Steps at the 18:50 mark).
Set against the vibrant backdrop of a 1960s-inspired, retro-futuristic world, Marvel Studios' The Fantastic Four: First Steps introduces Marvel’s First Family—Reed Richards/Mister Fantastic (Pedro Pascal), Sue Storm/Invisible Woman (Vanessa Kirby), Johnny Storm/Human Torch (Joseph Quinn) and Ben Grimm/The Thing (Ebon Moss-Bachrach) as they face their most daunting challenge yet.
Forced to balance their roles as heroes with the strength of their family bond, they must defend Earth from a ravenous space god called Galactus (Ralph Ineson) and his enigmatic Herald, Silver Surfer (Julia Garner). And if Galactus’ plan to devour the entire planet and everyone on it weren’t bad enough, it suddenly gets very personal.
Paul Walter Hauser, John Malkovich, Natasha Lyonne, and Sarah Niles have been cast in mystery roles. Robert Downey Jr.'s Doctor Doom is rumoured to appear, though that's surely a given with Avengers: Doomsday on the way.
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) later coming on board for a final polish.
The movie is set to be released in theaters on July 25, 2025.