Who Are The New Fantastic Four?

With the pre-release hype hotting up on Fox's attempt to out-Avengers The Avengers with the massively ambitious X-Men: Days of Future Past, talk has naturally turned to the other Marvel hero properties the studio owns and the possibility of an even more complex shared universe. With Days of Future Past set for this year and its probable sequel X-Men: Apocalypse due to arrive in 2016, there is a space in Fox's schedule for summer 2015, a space that will be filled by director Josh Trank's rebooted take on The Fantastic Four. This week saw the announcement of the kinda, sorta, almost-definitely-final cast for the four heroes, allowing speculation about the film to begin in earnest. Little is known about the plot at this stage, but the suggestion is that it will follow the trend of recent Marvel adaptations in following the 2000s Ultimates line rather than the original 1960s story. However, it is likely that the actual story has been cherry picked from favourite elements in the characters' 50 year run by Trank and an ever changing raft of writers including Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter's Seth Grahame-Smith and Simon Kinberg (here's hoping Fantastic Four is at least an improvement on that). It is generally supposed that it will be an origin story and that Victor von Doom will once again feature as the main villain, although Fox's keenness to retain the rights to the Silver Surfer suggest a future appearance from him and the possibility of bettering their previous attempt at the story arc involving planet eating Galactus. Perhaps the newly announced cast could tell us something about the film's development. But who are they? None of the actors are exactly A-list, although all of them have a "him from that thing" quality, but that is nothing unusual with superhero pictures whose marketing departments tend to be aware that the characters are the stars. So, come with us as we take you through the new Fantastic Four and what you might expect from their upcoming movie.