Fantastic Four: First Steps director Matt Shakman has confirmed that John Malkovich has been cut from the upcoming Marvel movie.
Malkovich was playing the Red Ghost, aka Ivan Kragoff, one of the Fantastic Four’s earliest villains. In the comics, he’s supported by a trio of “Super-Apes,” whom he takes into space to recreate the incident that gave the FF their powers.
According to Shakman (via Variety), the character and his Super-Apes were meant to feature in a lengthy segment showing the Fantastic Four’s pre-plot adventures. Despite saying that Malkovich “was brilliant in it, and gave it his all,” Shakman said, “There were a lot of things that ultimately ended up hitting the cutting room floor. When we were building a ’60s retro-future world, introducing all of these villains, introducing these four main characters as a group, as well as individually, introducing the idea of a child — there was a lot of stuff to balance in this movie and some things had to go ultimately in terms of shaping the film for its final version.”
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Shakman added it was “heartbreaking” to cut Malkovich, especially since the two worked together on the filmmaker’s 2014 feature debut, Cut Bank. Fans got their only glimpse of Malkovich (until the director’s cut, theoretically) in the first teaser, and will be able to see Fantastic Four: First Steps in full when it hits theaters on July 25th.
Content shared from consequence.net.