Pascal can project a sense of intelligence and authority on screen as well as or better than any of his contemporaries, so he’s a great fit as far as that’s concerned. As usual, we’re torn between the feeling of seeing a talented actor get the paychecks and job security they deserve by stepping into the MCU, and mourning the loss of the projects we may have seen if this casting didn’t go their way. But thanks to the studios’ utter mishandling of the historic dual strikes this year, there’s already a sense in the industry that a contraction period is upon us. If there’s any solace to take from that situation, perhaps it’s the somewhat depressing realization that Pascal may not have been given the chance to make the types of non-franchise projects we’d love to see, so maybe we should just embrace this news and appreciate that at least we’ll continue to see him on the big screen for years to come.
“Fantastic Four” is a project that has been on the burner for a long, long time now. Disney got the rights to both the X-Men and the Fantastic Four back with the acquisition of Fox, which closed in early 2019. Ever since, plans have been brewing to get Marvel’s first family back on the big screen. The last time we saw them was in 2015’s “Fantastic Four,” which was directed by Josh Trank and turned out to be a true critical and commercial disaster. Krasinski, one of the early fan favorites to play the character, did briefly play an alternate dimension version of Mr. Fantastic in “Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness,” but he was immediately (and satisfyingly) shredded to bits by Wanda Maximoff after just a couple minutes of screen time.