The Fantastic Four, Marvel’s most iconic superhero team, is finally coming to the Marvel Cinematic Universe and with them come a bunch of questions. Questions like “Where the hell have they been for the last two decades as heroes like Iron Man and Black Widow dealt with Thanos and others?”
The film’s first concept art seemed to answer that. Everything in the image (that simultaneously revealed the film’s cast of Pedro Pascal, Vanessa Kirby, Ebon Moss-Bachrach, and Joseph Quinn) screamed the 1960s. Could The Fantastic Four be a period film? The answer, we now know for sure, is yes.
“It is a period [film],” Marvel Studios president Kevin Feige confirmed on the Official Marvel Podcast, and he didn’t stop there. “There was another piece of art we released with Johnny Storm flying in the air making a ‘4’ symbol and there was a cityscape in the corner of that image and there were a lot of smart people who noticed that that cityscape didn’t look exactly like the New York that we know or the New York that existed in the ‘60s in our world. And those are smart observations, I’ll say.”
We cropped that section of the full image above. It certainly looks much, much more futuristic than New York even in the normal MCU 60 years later. That’s not a straightforward confirmation of The Fantastic Four being set in a different universe than the traditional MCU, but seems about as close as one gets from the notoriously secretive Feige.
Feige also explained why The Fantastic Four, over everything else Marvel has coming in the next few years, excites him the most. “I’m incredibly excited for what we’re doing with The Fantastic Four right now. And what Matt Shakman, our director who did WandaVision for us, is working on,” Feige said. “He’s already moved to London and we start filming at the end of July. Funny story, we start shooting the Monday after [San Diego] Comic-Con. The day after Comic-Con is the first day of filming on Fantastic Four. And I’m extremely excited by it because I think those characters are mainstays, are legendary pillars of the Marvel Universe that we’ve never got to play with or explore in any significant way apart from [Doctor Strange in the] Multiverse of Madness and a few fun teases before, in the way we’re doing it in that film. So, I’m extremely excited.”
Again, buried in there is Feige strongly suggesting The Fantastic Four cast will be together during Comic-Con, a fact that, mere hours later, was confirmed by Deadline. Marvel Studios will indeed be back in Hall H at San Diego Comic-Con, and you have to assume it’ll bring its Fantastic Four with it.
And, if that’s the case, we’re sure to learn much more about The Fantastic Four then and io9 will be there. But for now, we can 100% confirm Fantastic Four is a period piece that is probably taking place in an alternate universe. How will that line up with what’s happening in the normal Marvel Cinematic Universe? I guess we’ll have to see The Fantastic Four on July 25, 2025 to find out.
Want more io9 news? Check out when to expect the latest Marvel, Star Wars, and Star Trek releases, what’s next for the DC Universe on film and TV, and everything you need to know about the future of Doctor Who.
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