FANTASTIC FOUR Script Is Done, Casting Set To Begin

If you had your share of comic book movie rumors with Batman vs, Superman, The Avengers: The Age of Ultron, X: Mens Days of Future Past & Apocalypse, Ant-Man, Doctor Strange and Amazing Spider-Man 2, well, brace yourself. The Fantastic Four rumors are coming.

Variety reports that the script for Fox’s reboot of Marvel’s first family has been completed and that director Josh Trank and writer/producer Simon Kinberg  will begin screen testing by the end of this month.

The studio has been constructing a shortlist of actors for quite some time now. Michael B. Jordan was long rumored to be playing Johnny Storm, and Variety makes it sound like the only thing that could keep him from the role is if he has zero chemistry any of the actors up for any of the other roles.

For Reed Richards, Miles Teller is still in the mix, although during an interview at Sundance he made it sound that he was already cast. Kit Harrington, who was previously mentioned to be in the running, will also be testing, and they will be joined by a new name–his Game of Thrones co-star Richard Madden.

Kate Mara and Saoirse Ronan are still in line to test for the role of Sue Storm. Variety had no news for potential actors for Ben Grimm. Maybe since Grimm’s alter ego, the Thing, will be CGI, they don’t feel the need to screen test for the role.

All the male actors are in the 26-27 years old range, and Mara is a positively ancient 30 but plays younger and Ronan is a comparatively younger 19 but plays older. These show that the film most likely will be based on the Ultimate version of the team, who were all pretty much twentysomethings, than the classic version of the team, which had quite significant age differences (when the book debuted in 1961, Ben and Reed were WWII vets, Sue was in college, and Johnny was a teenager.

Anyhow, we should start hearing more come February. Fantastic Four is set to arrive in theaters on June 19, 2015.