Over the past few weeks, Phase 5 and Phase 6 of Marvel’s MCU have rapidly started to take shape. At a huge San Diego Comic-Con event, Marvel Studios announced and reconfirmed a ton of upcoming movies and shows. The one that has generated as much speculation as any is Fantastic Four, which kicks off Phase 6 in 2024. Thankfully, at least one mystery is solved, as Deadline reports that Jeff Kaplan and Ian Springer will write the script.
This news comes just days after the Marvel Studios panel at Disney’s D23 Expo where Kevin Feige confirmed that Matt Shakman (WandaVision) would direct Fantastic Four.
Sources tell Deadline that Kaplan and Springer have actually been attached to the project for even longer than Shakman. The two have been “outlining where this next series of films will fit into the Marvel Cinematic Universe” with Feige.
Kaplan and Springer will now work with Shakman to “align their visions for this project” before they begin writing the script. In the meantime, Shakman and Feige are finding actors to play Marvel’s “first family” in the MCU. We already met one variant of Reed Richards in Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, played by John Krasinski. He may return, but rumors suggest that Marvel will hire a new actor for the “real” Mister Fantastic.
Barring any delays, Fantastic Four will hit theaters on November 8th, 2024. The only other Phase 6 movies that Marvel has confirmed are Avengers: The Kang Dynasty and Avengers: Secret Wars, both of which are coming out in 2026. We expect the Fantastic Four to play a major role in those movies. That might explain why Kaplan and Springer are spending so much time with Feige mapping out the future of the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
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