You may remember him from: Probably most familiar to mainstream audiences from his roles as the protagonist's friend in the pointless Footloose remake, obnoxious teen party flick Project X and formulaic Zac Efron romcom That Awkward Moment (in which he appeared opposite Fantastic Four co-star Michael B. Jordan), Teller is probably the least known of the four and those roles are not auspicious of his ability to fill the nominal lead in a summer blockbuster. However, Teller is viewed as something of a rising star with indie credibility from his more acclaimed but less seen performances as a hedonistic teen in Romantic drama The Spectacular Now and a reckless driver in theatre adaptation Rabbit Hole. In the latter Teller's character was writing a comic about parallel universes, which appears to be his main previous qualification for playing a comic book scientist here. This summer will, however, test Teller's big action movie chops when he appears in young adult dystopia Divergent alongside his Spectacular Now co-star Shailene Woodley. It is this commitment to Divergent that makes Teller the least locked in of the Fantastic Four cast. If it becomes the next Hunger Games the next couple if years could be busy for him. If it turns out to be the next Mortal Instruments his schedule should be pretty clear. Is he a good fit? The de facto leader of the group, Reed typically acts a sort of mentor or father figure to the rest of the team. A genius scientist with a faintly implausible ability to turn his hand to literally any scientific discipline, Reed gains his powers in the original continuity along with the rest of the team after "borrowing" a spaceship to beat the Soviets in the space race. Years of soap opera-esque plotting since saw him get married and have a time travelling son to go with his time travelling dad. Given Teller's age, 27 and still often playing teenagers, the Ultimates version is a more likely fit. In this narrative Reed is a 21 year old former child prodigy who has invented a method of teleportation. He gets his stretchy powers when accidentally teleporting the team to a parallel universe, the Negative Zone. Being something of a coming of age story, Reed has less of a mentor-leader role, but remains occasionally more attached to science and logic than human relationships. Teller definitely has talent and leading man potential, but his lack of experience with a project like this make it difficult to predict. The greater concern may lie with making a character as super smart and idealistic as Reed Richards into an interesting film role. In the original movie Welsh actor Ioan Gruffud was as wooden as the Fantastic Floor comic The Simpsons' Comic Book Guy duplicitously sells Milhouse. Teller will need to bring more to the part than that for an audience to invest in his story.
