{"id":1926,"date":"2025-07-17T05:08:04","date_gmt":"2025-07-17T05:08:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/1926\/"},"modified":"2025-07-17T05:08:04","modified_gmt":"2025-07-17T05:08:04","slug":"john-malkovich-cut-from-the-fantastic-four-first-steps","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/1926\/","title":{"rendered":"John Malkovich cut from The Fantastic Four: First Steps"},"content":{"rendered":"

John Malkovich was set to join the Marvel Cinematic Universe as Ivan Kragoff, aka the Red Ghost, in The Fantastic Four: First Steps. We even caught a glimpse of Malkovich in the first teaser trailer<\/a>, but director Matt Shakman has told Variety<\/a> that he\u2019s had to cut him out of the movie.<\/p>\n

Malkovich was to be featured in an early sequence of the movie, with the Fantastic Four battling Red Ghost and his Super-Apes. \u201cThere were a lot of things that ultimately ended up hitting the cutting room floor,\u201d Shakman explained. \u201cWhen we were building a \u201960s retro-future world, introducing all of these villains, introducing these four main characters as a group, as well as individually, introducing the idea of a child \u2014 there was a lot of stuff to balance in this movie and some things had to go ultimately in terms of shaping the film for its final version.\u201c<\/p>\n

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\n The Fantastic Four: First Steps family members grace the cover of Time Magazine to promote Marvel\u2019s latest superhero epic <\/a><\/p>\n

Shakman added that Malkovich was \u201cbrilliant\u201d in the film and \u201cgave it his all,\u201d which made it all the more \u201cheartbreaking\u201d when he realized he had to leave him on the cutting room floor.<\/p>\n

It was heartbreaking not to include him in the final version of the movie because he\u2019s one of my very favorite humans and one of my biggest inspirations. As a person who walks the line between theater and film and television, there\u2019s no one who is more inspiring than the founder of Steppenwolf Theater Company. What he\u2019s done on stage as an actor and what he\u2019s done as a director in theater as well as in film, and as just a film actor of incredible ability \u2014 I was honored he came to play.<\/p>\n

Given that Malkovich has previously turned down roles in Marvel movies<\/a>, it\u2019s a shame he was cut out of the one he did accept.<\/p>\n

The\u00a0official synopsis<\/a>\u00a0for\u00a0The Fantastic Four: First Steps: \u201cSet against the vibrant backdrop of a 1960s-inspired, retro-futuristic world, \u201cThe Fantastic Four: First Steps\u201d introduces Marvel\u2019s First Family\u2014Reed Richards\/Mister Fantastic, Sue Storm\/Invisible Woman, Johnny Storm\/Human Torch, and Ben Grimm\/The Thing as they face their most daunting challenge yet. Forced to balance their roles as heroes with the strength of their family bond, they must defend Earth from a ravenous space god called Galactus (Ralph Ineson) and his enigmatic Herald, Silver Surfer (Julia Garner). And if Galactus\u2019 plan to devour the entire planet and everyone on it weren\u2019t bad enough, it suddenly gets very personal.\u201d<\/p>\n

The film will hit theaters on July 25.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"John Malkovich was set to join the Marvel Cinematic Universe as Ivan Kragoff, aka the Red Ghost, in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1927,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[49,48,75,2626,337,2627],"class_list":["post-1926","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-movies","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-entertainment","tag-john-malkovich","tag-movies","tag-the-fantastic-four-first-steps"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1926","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1926"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1926\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1927"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1926"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1926"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1926"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}