The release of The Fantastic Four: First Steps marks a big moment for fans of Marvel Comics, as the film is looking to bring a screen-accurate depiction of Galactus to the big screen. However, the devourer of worlds almost made his feature film debut back in 2015’s Fantastic Four. Ever since Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer (2007), the number one priority has been to depict the character in his iconic Jack Kirby design. Jeremy Slater, one of the original writers on the 2015 Fantastic Four reboot, planned to correct that mistake a decade ago, but those plans were dropped.
Speaking with Comic Book, Slater was asked if he had seen the new trailer for The Fantastic Four: First Steps, and the writer immediately pointed out how he thinks “they are getting Galactus right.” Slater spoke about how he originally planned to feature Galactus as the main villain for 2015’s Fantastic Four, partially as a fan who was unhappy with the depiction in Rise of the Silver Surfer. Despite Slater’s intentions, it appears some pushback led to Galactus being downplayed in subsequent drafts, at one point being reduced to a post-credit scene that never materialized. Slater said:
“I wanted to make him our big bad and there was some internal push back. First, he was our big bad. Then, he was just going to appear in one scene. Then, he was only appearing in the post-credits scene. Coming off the Galactus cloud from [2007’s Fantastic Four:] Rise of the Silver Surfer, which I was one of those fanboys probably bitching on Ain’t It Cool News back then about how he was a f-cking cloud, I was excited to bring back a classic Galactus and have that Jack Kirby design. It looked like they’ve accomplished that, so I can’t wait to see him in real life.”
Galactus’s Ever-Changing Role in ‘Fantastic Four’
This is not the first time Jeremy Slater has opened up about his experience working on Fantastic Four, or his plans for Galactus. Slater’s original script featured Doctor Doom as a spy who becomes a herald of Galactus, the film’s primary villain. By including Galactus, Slater hoped the film would be similar in scope to The Avengers, but director Josh Trank hated that type of superhero movie. Instead, he wanted to play up the body horror elements. Slater previously mentioned how Trank would leave him out of discussions with the studio and would not give him the notes the studio requested, so it is unclear exactly if it was Fox or Trank’s decision to scrap Galactus.
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It did seem that 20th Century Fox wanted to include Galactus and the Silver Surfer in their Fantastic Four reboot when they first greenlit the project, since the studio gave up Daredevil and Elektra for them. In 2012, Marvel Studios offered to allow Fox an extension on the Daredevil film rights to get the planned Joe Carnahan 1970s period piece into production. In exchange for the extension, Marvel Studios wanted the rights to Galactus and the Silver Surfer, possibly to include them as major players in their growing cosmic storyline since Guardians of the Galaxy was announced earlier that year. Fox opted to let Daredevil go to hold onto Galactus and the Silver Surfer, yet ultimately didn’t use them in the Fantastic Four reboot like they planned.
20th Century Fox was originally very confident in Fantastic Four, even announcing a sequel set for Jun. 2, 2017, over a year before the first film opened. It seems like the plan was for Galactus to appear in the film’s sequel, with a post-credits scene teasing his arrival. However, Fox gave up on that idea, as the finished version of Fantastic Four does not feature a post-credit scene to tease a sequel that would never come. After Fantastic Four bombed at the box office and earned some of the worst reviews for a superhero movie, the sequel was removed from the release calendar in November 2015. Now the Fantastic Four are making their grand return to the big screen and doing what Slater intended to do a decade ago, featuring Galactus as the primary villain and the giant purple helmet-wearing planet-eating horror that fans love.
Source: Comic Book
This story originally appeared on Movieweb
