00:00There's over 60 years of Fantastic Four.
00:10It's been one of the great teams in Marvel for a reason.
00:13You know, when you start these projects, you start doing your research.
00:16And as part of that homework, we did go back and look at the Corman Fantastic Four version.
00:21We watched it. We got excited about it.
00:24And, you know, Matt came into my office one day while we were prepping.
00:27He said, you know, it'd be really great to honor them somehow.
00:29We got to get them in this movie.
00:31And then shortly thereafter, Kevin and I were chatting.
00:33I said, hey, Matt's got this idea about getting the original Fantastic Four in this movie.
00:37What do you think?
00:38And he said, oh, man, that's the coolest ever.
00:40And from that day forward, we were just honestly looking for the right opportunity.
00:43And we found it. They came in.
00:45That was one of my favorite days on set.
00:47And you just saw the light in their eyes.
00:50This is Sue Storm, and I used to meet Reed Richards, Johnny Storm, and Bed Groom.
00:59The basic backstory is there was a film producer by the name of Bernd Eichinger.
01:05And Bernd had the rights, apart from Marvel, for the Fantastic Four.
01:09And he was going to lose the rights unless he went into production by a certain date.
01:12So he goes to Roger Corman and says, hey, I want to make this movie.
01:15Can you make this movie and make it right now and make it cheap?
01:17And Roger says, sure.
01:18We put together this million dollar movie, which for Corman was actually probably a very big budget at the time.
01:24But certainly not a budget that you need for a movie like the Fantastic Four.
01:28They did a lot of things right in that movie.
01:30And I've had a conversation with all four of them.
01:32One of the things I think they did extremely well was the character relationships.
01:35It holds up.
01:36And, you know, not every special effect on any movie holds up over time.
01:39But those were very real relationships that when we did our homework and we looked at the movie early on, we took note.
01:45The phrase happy accident can come to mind to answer the question of why was the casting so good?
01:53Especially under the gun in a situation that sort of needed to fit right away.
01:57The fact that we were given these roles relatively easily because they were under the gun allowed us to either trust ourselves or not.
02:03And part of the reluctant superhero dynamic of the dysfunctional Fantastic Four are embodied in the way the four of us worked with each other.
02:11Everybody was so close to those characters.
02:14I'm the big, strong, protecting guy, right?
02:17Kind of innocent and kind of humble.
02:19And that's how Ben Grimm is.
02:20Reed Richards, Alex, is a natural leader.
02:23Johnny Storm, as you know, is just a bubbly, fiery dude.
02:27And Rebecca's always been a little shy, right?
02:30Reserved.
02:31And that's the invisible woman.
02:32So we just did ourselves.
02:33We all knew that we were working on the Fantastic Four, Marvel's flagship comic book.
02:39And so we all took it very seriously.
02:42And Ole Cecil and the director got us all together for a pep talk right before we started shooting.
02:47And he said, gang, we know what we're doing.
02:49We know what we're up against, not having enough money for the effects that it needs to have.
02:54So let's focus on what we have control over.
02:56And he says, I'm going to do my best as a director.
02:59I want you all as actors to do your best.
03:02I want you to take this seriously.
03:03Develop the characters.
03:04And he said, let's work really hard at recreating the comic onto the screen.
03:09We were trying to be true to the comic book because we knew the audience.
03:13Like, we owed it to the audience.
03:15You go, they know this better than we do.
03:17So we better be accurate.
03:19And so we didn't even set out to go, oh, it's a period piece.
03:22You just go, well, it looks like this because that's what it looked like in the comic book.
03:26And so it gave it a little kind of timelessness just organically.
03:33We were filming at Rogers Studio, which is this dilapidated warehouse in Venice Beach, California.
03:39And rats and cockroaches and the place should have been condemned years before, you know.
03:44It's like being in the trenches of a war kind of thing.
03:47There was like one room where we would either hang out or change clothes if I had to change.
03:52And then when it was just bare bones, all of the wardrobe that I wear in the movies, my own clothes,
03:57I think everybody's wear their own clothes.
03:59Like the only real wardrobe were the blue suits and my wedding dress.
04:03And so when we got the suits the very first time and I put them on,
04:07you can actually see the hand stitching, like where the blue and the white is.
04:11And I said to the costume designer, it's like, you can see the stitching.
04:14And he's like, that's okay, because Sue made them.
04:16That's all we had to go with.
04:18I get there. I said, so I'm in the suit, right?
04:20And they go, uh, no, it took six months to build this suit.
04:24And this has already been done by optic nerve was who did it.
04:27So they had to hire a stunt guy named Carl Cifaglio.
04:30I was so destroyed and disappointed because that's the good part.
04:34So what I did is I was on the set every day he was on the set.
04:38And I made sure that we worked together as a good stunt guy would do it,
04:42make sure that he mimics what the actor is going to do.
04:44Then when ADR came in, I voiced everything and it's clobbering time.
04:49We knew that this could also be a calling card for all of us, right?
04:54This could put us on the maps in terms of boosting a career kind of thing.
04:58And so, uh, we took it seriously.
05:00Our whole passion with doing this was that we would get to do another one.
05:04It's like, if we do this good enough, you know, the next time we'll get the money,
05:07and then we can do two and we kind of had it all planned out.
05:10We went into production. We finished the movie.
05:12We were looking forward to it actually coming out.
05:15There was a premiere that was scheduled at the Mall of America.
05:18The comic world knew about the movie.
05:20We had done Comic Cons and conventions already at this point.
05:25After that trailer played at the Shrine Auditorium, Alex looks at me and he says,
05:31Michael, we've got to do something, you know, in that Alex voice.
05:35And I go, what do we do?
05:36He goes, we're going to hire a publicist.
05:37And I know somebody.
05:38And so I ended up paying for the publicist, about 15 grand in my own pocket.
05:41And we went around the country promoting this.
05:44There's an old actors thing.
05:46You have to go out and find your audience.
05:48We would go to little comic conventions.
05:50There was no such thing as big comic conventions.
05:52I think we went to one of the original San Diego Comic Cons, which was in a hotel.
05:56And we would show the trailer.
05:58And we would sign pictures.
05:59We were on, like, Hollywood Reporter, a film thread, all these different things.
06:03Just crazy.
06:04And then we promoted.
06:05We said, screw it.
06:06We're going to keep going.
06:07We're going to keep going.
06:08And we did.
06:09We've come, like, I think it was in either end of November or December.
06:12Oh, they called us and said, hey, we need to stop.
06:14The rights have been sold.
06:16The plug got pulled.
06:18It disappeared.
06:19And then that's what's then become just Hollywood lore for these last 30 years.
06:25Really makes me emotional because it was a real effort of love and fun.
06:30Films get shelved every day.
06:32We all know that.
06:33But not the way ours did.
06:34You know, and that really hurt us.
06:39Maybe 10 years later, the internet magnified all of that.
06:44So we were like a little fungus that grew into a big mushroom, you know?
06:47If they had just done it by the contract and, okay, now it's January 1st.
06:50We got some stuff in the can.
06:52Thanks and go home.
06:53There never would have been a movie.
06:55And I have to say, one time we were at a Comic Con in St. Louis.
06:58And they actually showed it in one of the ballrooms.
07:02The sound is incredible.
07:05And the music.
07:06And by that time, you know, the things that were kind of cheesy weren't like cheesy like, ugh, stupid cheesy.
07:12Like it was funny.
07:13And the stuff that was so sincere was kind of fun.
07:16And to watch it with an audience and you hear people laugh, you hear people cheer, you know, you get goosebumps like the music.
07:23You get a little teary-eyed.
07:25It was so phenomenal.
07:27You know, once we understood that people refer to this film as a hidden gem through internet and whatnot, you know, we were here all along.
07:35And finally we're in the right place at the right time to contribute.
07:38And yes, we are all thrilled of that.
07:40Thank you Fantastic Four!
07:42We've got to go again on that one.
07:45I can't count.
07:47Three, two, one, action!
07:49Thank you Fantastic Four!
07:51For the last 30 years, all of us, we've only ever wanted some kind of acknowledgement that a movie was made, right?
07:59That this movie exists.
08:01And whether we thought, oh man, would it be great if Marvel maybe put it on some DVD as an extra or a special or this, that or the other.
08:08But as Rebecca was saying, we were talking earlier, and she said, you know, but this is the one.
08:13This is the right one.
08:14There's something special, I think, about this version that's being made.
08:18And for us to fit in with this version, we had to wait 30 years.
08:23And that's okay!
08:24Thank you very much, everybody!
08:26In a sense, that is a marvel.
08:29That's something that, in a way, we sort of had to pretend we didn't do.
08:34Has maintained its relevance in the Marvel Universe.
08:38The countdown continues as the Fantastic Four prepare to welcome a new member of the family.
08:44You can imagine how that feels for an artist.
08:47We're laughing and joking coming onto the set here today because, you know, I said, guys, we're going from Roger Corman's rundown studio to Marvel.
08:57Any time we're together is fantastic, but this time especially.
09:02And to be included now in the Marvel Universe, it was elation.
09:07I mean, it was just a thrill.
09:09Again, this is 30 years in the making for us.
09:12This is truly coming full circle.
09:15There he is.
09:16There we are.
09:17There we are.
09:18And what was now next?
09:19Yeah.
09:20Then...
09:21Onward.
09:22What did we say?
09:23Excelsior.
09:24Excelsior.
09:25Excelsior.
09:26Excelsior.
09:27I think we need another take for that.
09:29Hold on.
09:30All right, here we go.
09:31He's really the leader.
09:32And...
09:33Excelsior!
09:34No, no, I need to go again.
09:35Thanks for having us.
09:36Thanks for having us.
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