Kevin Feige Says 2025’s ‘Fantastic Four’ Movie Has No “Fear of Being Silly”

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The release of The Fantastic Four: First Steps is less than two weeks away, and Marvel Studios CEO Kevin Feige has shed some light on how it will differ from past iterations of Marvel’s First Family. Long before Feige stepped into such a vital role at Marvel Studios, he worked as an up-and-coming exec on Fox-produced Marvel movies. He even earned executive producer credits for both Fantastic Four (2005) and Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer (2007). Feige was around for both films, and he was obviously heavily involved in the making of the MCU’s iteration, The Fantastic Four: First Steps. During a recent chat with Empire Magazine to promote the new Fantastic Four movie, Kevin Feige spoke about the main differences between the older iteration of Marvel’s First Family and 2025’s version:

“I was around for those early Fantastic Four movies… and like all of the pre-MCU movies, I learned a lot. I always thought, if we ever got creative autonomy ourselves, we might do things a little differently… It was a different time… there was still a bit of a fear of being silly.”

While it could be easy to take his words and assume The Fantastic Four: First Steps is going to just be a silly, goofy Marvel movie, this likely isn’t what Feige means. How the world views superheroes, and particularly superhero movies, has changed in the last 10–15 years more than ever. The costumes in early movies more closely resemble spies, often wearing all black instead of the colorful spandex seen between the pages of comic books. There’s even a joke about this in X-Men ‘97, when Cyclops turns to Wolverine and says, “What would you prefer? Black leather?” This is a play on James Marsden’s Cyclops asking Hugh Jackman’s Wolverine if he’d rather wear yellow spandex, but it also serves as a reminder that superhero movies don’t have to be afraid of their identity like they used to.

The Fantastic Four: First Steps

Release Date: July 25, 2025
Runtime: 130 Minutes
Director: Matt Shakman
Writers: Jeff Kaplan, Josh Friedman, Ian Springer, Eric Pearson, Jack Kirby, Stan Lee
Producers: Jamie Christopher, Kevin Feige, Louis D’Esposito, Tim Lewis