Pedro Pascal and Fantastic Four Cast Hug Ahead of Comic-Con Debut

Pedro Pascal, Vanessa Kirby, Ebon Moss-Bachrach, and Joseph Quinn made their much-anticipated debut at San Diego Comic-Con as the new Fantastic Four on Saturday, July 27, during Marvel Studios’ presentation. Before stepping on stage, the cast shared a heartfelt group hug backstage, as shown in behind-the-scenes footage shared by Pascal via Instagram Stories on Sunday, July 28.

During the panel, Marvel Studios president Kevin Feige announced that the upcoming reboot will be titled The Fantastic Four: First Steps and will feature iconic villains Galactus and the Silver Surfer.

“We’re all collectively going to bring an essence that is a family rather than thinking about what we individually are going to bring,” Quinn shared at the event, as reported by Entertainment Weekly.

The new Fantastic Four lineup sees Pascal as Reed Richards/Mr. Fantastic, Kirby as Sue Storm/The Invisible Woman, Quinn as Johnny Storm/The Human Torch, and Moss-Bachrach as Ben Grimm/The Thing.

“I don’t think I’ve laughed so much in a rehearsal period before,” Kirby said during the presentation. “We laughed so much. We want to do it justice. It’s amazing reading comics from the ’60s all the way up. When you read the comics, it’s got so much joy in it so I hope we can bring that to the movie.”

Moss-Bachrach, who will use motion-capture technology to play the Thing, mentioned he received a supportive text from Marvel star Mark Ruffalo. Ruffalo shared his experience with motion capture technology, helping to ease Moss-Bachrach’s apprehensions about it.

“I got a really nice text message from Mark Ruffalo just to demystify the process of motion capture because I’ve never done it before,” he noted. “He sent a long, generous text message taking away a bit of how I was scared of the technology.”

The Fantastic Four: First Steps is set to start shooting in London this week. Pascal documented the cast’s first on-set meeting on Thursday, July 25, via Instagram. He shared a selfie with his co-stars, captioned: “Our first mission 💙.” The movie is scheduled for release on July 25, 2025.

In another shocking announcement during Marvel Studios’ presentation, it was revealed that Robert Downey Jr. will return to the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) as Doctor Doom in the next two Avengers movies, set for release in 2026 and 2027, respectively.

Source: Entertainment Weekly