“The Fantastic Four: First Steps” isn't an origin story: 'We're making it our own thing' (exclusive)

"We thought, 'Well, let's just start this thing off on a completely new foot,'" director Matt Shakman tells EW.

Marvel's first family is in the house.

After making their first public appearance together at Marvel Studios' Comic-Con 2024 panel Saturday night, Pedro Pascal, Vanessa Kirby, Joseph Quinn, and Ebon Moss-Bachrach teased The Fantastic Four: First Steps in an exclusive interview in Entertainment Weekly’s video suite in San Diego, alongside director Matt Shakman.

Since there have already been several cinematic iterations of the Fantastic Four, Shakman told EW that First Steps won't focus on the genesis of the team's superpowers. "One of the things we decided early on was not to do an origin story," the filmmaker said. "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.'"

Moss-Bachrach pointedly avoided the prior big-screen adaptations of the Fantastic Four comics, which released in 2005, 2007, and 2015.

"I haven't seen those movies," he said. "When I got hired to do this, it didn't feel like that would be productive to watch those movies. People ask me about 'How is this different from those other ones?' and I don't think it's helpful to make something in opposition to something else."

Related: Marvel's The Fantastic Four gets new subtitle, director confirms 'retro-future '60s' setting

He continued, "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."

Pascal echoed his costar's sentiments. "The authorship that we have as a family is what's anchoring us to this experience, and the rest of it is all valuable information and inspiration," he said.

The retro-futurist 1960s setting is another intentional distinction from previous FF movies — and also helped inspire the newly revealed subtitle for the film. "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 said. "So First Steps is partly to do with that idea about exploration."

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Shakman emphasized how the the optimism of space exploration influenced the spirit of the movie. "The comic was created in the early '60s, really at the same time that the space race was starting, so it is infused with that idea of looking to the stars and dreaming of a future where we would be space travelers," he said. "And so I really wanted to take all of that great stuff from Apollo 11 and just imagine that instead of Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin, it was the Storms and Ben Grimm and Reed Richards heading off into space."

The director also explained how the pre-production footage screened at Marvel's Hall H panel came to be. "We shot a few days some stuff in this astronaut prep area, getting ready to go to space," Shakman said. "We shot [the] dating game — Let's Make a Match, it's called — and we shot Reed Richards' science show that he does weekly for kiddos. And then we also combined it with a bunch of [pre-visualization] and animatics that we've been creating to help design the world."

The Fantastic Four will also feature Julia Garner as the Silver Surfer; Ralph Ineson as Galactus; and Paul Walter Hauser, John Malkovich, and Natasha Lyonne in undisclosed roles.

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Marvel Studios also worked Fantastic Four into a number of other promotional stints during Comic-Con weekend. After a certain F4 actor made a surprise appearance at a screening of Deadpool and Wolverine, a drone show formed a massive version of the team's logo and teased Galactus on Thursday night, and numerous banners featuring retro illustrations of the team promoted the film around San Diego all week.

With reporting by Gerrad Hall.

Read the original article on Entertainment Weekly.