Adrien Brody or Jonathan Rhys-Meyers to Play Mr. Fantastic in Fantastic Four Reboot?
Posted 08.23.10 by BrentJS
Now that Fox has its principal actors in place and is preparing to go into production in a little over one week on X-Men: First Class, the studio is apparently turning its attention toward putting together a new cast for its other major Marvel Comics property, the Fantastic Four. Though both Fantastic Four and its sequel, Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer, turned a profit, both movies were heavily criticized and neither managed to strike a chord with die-hard comic book movie fans. The third movie, tentatively titled Fantastic Four Reborn, will be a complete reboot of the franchise, with all new cast members portraying the famous family of superheroes.
In recent weeks, both Alice Eve—who was recently connected to First Class, but apparently passed on it because of her displeasure with changes to the script—and Amber Heard have been rumored to be up for the role of the matriarch of the team, Susan Storm, aka Invisible Woman, previously played by Jessica Alba. Now, ScreenRant is claiming to have some inside information about the actors on deck to play Sue's husband, Reed Richards, aka Mr. Fantastic. The site claims that Fox is pursuing Oscar-winner Adrien Brody and Jonathan Rhys-Meyers to step into the role played by Ioan Gruffudd in the first two movies.
For the uninitiated, Mr. Fantastic is the public persona of billionaire inventor and world-class genius, Reed Richards. While testing an experimental rocket accompanied by his best friend, Ben Grimm, his then-girlfriend, Sue Storm, and Sue’s kid brother, Johnny, Reed and the crew were bathed in cosmic rays that forever altered their DNA, granting them extraordinary superpowers. The rays affected each member of the crew differently—Reed’s body became super-malleable and elastic, capable of flattening to the thickness of a sheet of paper or stretching to incredible lengths; Ben gained enormous physical strength and durability, but became horribly disfigured; Sue gained the ability to turn invisible and to create invisible forcefields; and Johnny became capable of self-combustion, fire-projection and flight. The family decided to use their powers for good and became the Fantastic Four. Based out of the Baxter Building in downtown New York City, the Fantastic Four are one of the few teams of superheroes whose identifies are public knowledge.
The writer of the Fantastic Four Reborn script has not been revealed as of yet and no director has been attached to the movie. Fox is said to be aiming at going into production in 2011 for a 2012 release, which would put it into a year already crowded with such superhero movies as Batman 3, Spider-Man 4, Superman: The Man of Steel and The Avengers.