Pedro Pascal, the hardest-working man in Hollywood, has just notched another huge role: he'll play Reed Richards, aka Mister Fantastic, in Marvel's upcoming Fantastic Four movie. He'll be joined by Vanessa Kirby as Susan Storm, aka the Invisible Woman; Ebon Moss-Bachrach as Ben Grimm, aka the Thing; and Joseph Quinn as Johnny Storm, aka the Human Torch.
This comes straight from Disney, which revealed the cast of the long-in-gestation movie as a Valentine's Day gift to fans:
Happy Valentine’s Day from Marvel’s First Family! Pedro Pascal, Vanessa Kirby, Ebon Moss-Bachrach, and Joseph Quinn are The Fantastic Four.
— Marvel Entertainment (@Marvel) February 14, 2024
Marvel Studios' #TheFantasticFour, in theaters July 25, 2025. pic.twitter.com/unLVxPsjSW
The Fantastic Four are one of the oldest superhero teams in the Marvel canon. Mister Fantastic can stretch, the Thing is made of rock, the Human Torch works wonders with fire and if you can't figure out what the Invisible Woman does I don't know what to tell you. They've been fighting crime together for decades, in the comics and on the big screen. There have been two attempts in recent years to turn the Fantastic Four into a movie franchise, both with completely different casts. The most recent 2015 Fantastic Four movie had middling box office returns and received disastrous notices from critics. The new movie is the first time Marvel Studios has gotten its hands on the property, so we'll see what magic they can work.
Is Pedro Pascal overexposed?
Pedro Pascal is the biggest name among the core cast, but the other actors are no slouches. Vanessa Kirby rose to prominence as a young Princess Margaret on the Netflix series The Crown while Ebon Moss-Bachrach received an Emmy award for his work on The Bear. As for Joseph Quinn, he was on fire the other year thanks to his role as D&D-loving metalhead Eddie Munson on the fourth season of Netflix's Stranger Things. People wanted more, and Marvel is going to give it to them.
Meanwhile, Pascal has been getting cast in so many big franchises I'm starting to wonder if he has a problem. He got his big break as Oberyn Martell on Game of Thrones, and since then he's played the title role in The Mandalorian, the first-ever live-action Star Wars TV show; he plays lead character Joel in HBO's hugely successful zombie series The Last of Us; and he'll appear in the sequel to Gladiator later this year. And now this. It's like he has a mission to become the most recognizable face on the planet.
I worry about Pascal's face becoming so well-known that people get sick of seeing it, but I don't feel like that's happened yet. Pascal has an affable, easy-going demeanor that disarms people, and he's done a good job of mixing up dramatic roles with comic roles with action roles. It may seem like he's in every other movie and show these days, but at least he's giving different kinds of performances.
Still, joining yet another huge franchise may be pushing things. We'll see how it all shakes out when Fantastic Four hits theaters on July 25, 2025.
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