First Steps Director on Tragic Silver Surfer Scene

It took over three decades for a filmmaker to pull it off, but Matt Shakman has now made the definitive live-action adaptation of Marvel’s first family by way of The Fantastic Four: First Steps. 

Fantastic Four is not only the most well received blockbuster of the summer, but it’s also just set 2025’s opening night record of $24.4 million. The critical and commercial win couldn’t come at a better time for Marvel Studios amid the superhero genre’s post-pandemic inconsistency. And given the heavy losses that Shakman himself has endured recently, one can’t help but root for him and his film.

When THR last caught up with Shakman for Monarch: Legacy of Monsters, he mentioned his admiration for Christopher Nolan and Stanley Kubrick, and so it doesn’t come as a surprise that his Fantastic Four invites comparisons to Nolan’s Interstellar (2014) and Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968). Fantastic Four contains shots and sequences that pay homage to both pictures, but like Interstellar, the film is largely about the great lengths parents will go to in order to protect their children.

“T.S. Eliot said, ‘Good artists borrow, great artists steal,’ and I definitely am not ashamed of stealing from some of the folks that I love so much,” Shakman tells The Hollywood Reporter. “So Interstellar was a huge reference, as well as 2001 and Apollo 13.”

Interstellar’s central relationship between a loving father and daughter inspired the 2014 film’s production codename, Flora’s Letter, which was meant to be a tribute to Nolan’s own daughter who cameos in the film. Fantastic Four’s primary conflict involves Reed Richards (Pedro Pascal) and Sue Storm’s (Vanessa Kirby) efforts to protect their soon-to-be-born baby, Franklin, from the wrath of a planet-devouring demigod named Galactus (Ralph Ineson). Thus, Shakman drew upon the challenges that he and his wife Maggie Malone experienced in giving birth to their daughter, Maisie. The 9-year-old girl also has her own cameo in the opening minutes of Fantastic Four. 

“I brought so much of my own experience as a husband and as a father. The birth of my daughter was the most fantastic moment of my life. So the birth in this movie evokes all those feelings that I had on that day,” Shakman shares. “[Maisie Shakman] really wanted to do this fun little cameo where she’s saved by Johnny Storm. I was so nervous that day, but she was just such a cool customer and she had such a great time.”

Familial sacrifice also plays a part in Shalla-Bal/Silver Surfer’s (Julia Garner) subplot, prompting Shakman to conduct additional photography a little over two months ago for the sake of showing, not telling.

“It was during post that I felt like I really wanted to see this thing that we talked about, which is the idea of her sacrifice and the decision that she faced in choosing between her family, her planet and her own life,” Shakman says. “It’s so evocative to the themes of the movie at large and reflective, no pun intended, of the Fantastic Four’s crisis and their conflict, so it felt like it was something we needed to see.”

Below, during a recent conversation with THR, Shakman also discusses the character overlap between Sue Storm and Wanda Maximoff, as well as the original plan behind the mid-credit scene.

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Two of the most optimistic superhero movies ever made have landed within two weeks of each other. They also bypass origin stories for the most part. Were you and Superman writer-director James Gunn drinking water from the same well the last few years? 

(Laughs.) Perhaps! It’s amazing how the zeitgeist can create things, but no, I’ve never met James Gunn. I’m a huge fan of his work. I’m also a huge Superman fan, so I’m thrilled that they’re both out this month.

When you helmed WandaVision, Marvel was still approaching their TV series with the same methodology as their movies. They’ve since gone the more traditional route. Thus, did you make a seamless transition to the feature side of things?

Well, making WandaVision was wonderful. It was the highlight of my directing career before getting the chance to make Fantastic Four. Both of them are right up there for me, and it was a great opportunity to work with everyone at Marvel very closely and to realize just how intimate an experience it is to work at Marvel. It’s a small family making something. You think of [Marvel] as the production company behind the studio and these enormous tentpoles, but [their projects] are really made by very few people, passionate people, working really hard. So making six hours of Wanda definitely felt like swinging two or three bats, and while Fantastic Four was still a giant task, it’s a little easier to focus on two hours of material instead of six. 

Sue and Wanda both depict the concept of “hysterical strength.” The classic example is when a mother can somehow lift a car to save her baby, and Fantastic Four co-creator Jack Kirby apparently witnessed something like that en route to creating the Hulk. So how conscious were you of Sue and Wanda’s overlap?

The two strongest people I know are my wife and my daughter. They constantly inspire me with their strength, and I see that in Sue and in Wanda, so I tried to bring that [strength] to both of them. They’re both amazing characters in Marvel and in comic books, in general, and I’ve been so lucky to help bring both of their stories to life, both through WandaVision and now Fantastic Four. Wanda is a deeply emotional character, as is Sue. They both have incredible emotional intelligence, and they are handling so much, having both gone through so much. We put Sue through the wringer in this movie, for sure. Vanessa Kirby and Lizzie Olsen are both incredible actors, and getting the chance to work with them both to bring these characters to life was amazing.

I don’t know if you’ve seen Materialists, but Pedro Pascal’s character voluntarily augmented himself in a way that became a blessing for him. Conversely, with Reed’s elasticity being involuntarily forced upon him, does he consider his power to be a blessing?

In [1961’s] Fantastic Four #1, Reed basically says something that’s similar to what Uncle Ben says to Spider-Man: “With great power comes great responsibility.” In the very first Fantastic Four comic book that Kirby and [Stan] Lee created, they say, “We need to use these powers for good. We need to make our world better because of what happened to us.” So very early on, they make that decision, and it’s part of their optimism. It’s part of their civic-minded nature. And so, yes, I think they all think of it as being a blessing, but maybe with the exception of Ben. Throughout the comic books, there’s been an ongoing story of Ben struggling with questions of, “Is he a man? Is he a monster who’s trying to hold onto his humanity?” He’s the one of the four that isn’t in control of his powers. He can’t turn on his rock nature or turn it off. So his powers are a burden for him in a way that the others’ powers are not.

When you and Ebon first discussed the material, was he a good sport about playing another character with culinary interests? 

(Laughs.) The culinary part of it wasn’t really what we talked about from the beginning. That was something that happened as we were going along, and the idea that Ben was the chef and worked with Herbie to cook stuff just made sense. It really sprung out of who Ben Grimm is. He’s not really a blood relative of any of them, but he’s the glue that holds this family together. [Writer’s Note: Funnily enough, despite being referred to as “Cousin,” Moss-Bachrach’s character on The Bear also isn’t blood-related to the story’s central family.]

I love August Wilson’s play Joe Turner’s Come and Gone, and there’s a character called Bynum because he binds everyone together. So I think of Ben as being that. He’s very community minded. He loves Yancy Street where he grew up. He still goes back there. We had [those scenes] in the film for a reason. He’s also very family-oriented, and he’s an incredibly kind, caring person, while also being hilarious. That’s what’s so great about him. He has the rough, hard exterior, and yet he has this soft gooey center. Ebon is just amazing at bringing him to life, and he’s such a funny actor, but also such a brilliant dramatic actor. He’s able to hold all of those elements of Ben in one brilliant performance.

I asked Joseph Quinn at Warfare’s press day if you remembered him on the Game of Thrones “Spoils of War” set in 2016. His character was covered in armor, he only had a couple scenes, and there were a thousand people on that set. This was also long before he covered Metallica on Netflix. Did he actually register with you back then? 

Yeah, he did. A hundred percent. Joe is a great actor, and he’s also a lovely guy. We had two or three days together on Game of Thrones. It wasn’t a lot, but still very memorable. I thought, “This kid is great,” and I’ve been so impressed by his range. Looking at Game of Thrones, Stranger Things, Warfare, Gladiator II and this movie, everything that he’s done is so different. He’s very transformative as an actor and just alive. He has such a spark to him. So I absolutely remember him, and he was on my list [for Johnny Storm] right away.

The design of this movie is mighty impressive across the board, especially Kasra Farahani’s production design. During the strikes, I believe that’s all you could really work on, so do you credit that unusual time period for how intricate and immaculate everything is?

Yeah, having a little extra time was definitely very helpful. We had it on WandaVision too because of the pandemic. We were able to do storyboarding and concept art. So a lot of design work happened during that period, even some early VFX look development, and I do credit that. 

Kasra is amazing. He is a singular artist, a genius and just a wonderful collaborator. We went deep into Syd Mead, Oscar Niemeyer, Eero Saarinen and the World’s Fair in New York in the mid-’60s. We had all of these great reference points, as well as Jack Kirby and the comic books, in building this world that would feel grounded and authentic. We wanted it to feel like the ‘60s that we know from history, but with this layer of futurism on top of it, a layer that comes from Reed Richards. 

Reed didn’t exist in our ‘60s because we’re on a different Earth in a different universe, but he existed there, and he’s like Steve Jobs, J. Robert Oppenheimer, Albert Einstein and Robert Moses all combined. For 20 or 30 years, he’s been changing that city in a way that our New York in the ‘60s did not. So it was about trying to find those layers of history and then finding those offshoots of Reed Richards’ tech that grow out of the familiar New York.

When their ship prepares to dock in outer space, you have the Interstellar-type shot where the camera is fastened to the exterior of the ship. Overall, was that movie one of your references?

I love Interstellar, I love [Christopher] Nolan and I love Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey. When you see a shot of [Excelsior] docking, it is absolutely a loving homage to the Pan Am jet heading towards the space station in 2001. T.S. Eliot said, “Good artists borrow, great artists steal,” and I definitely am not ashamed of stealing from some of the folks that I love so much. So Interstellar was a huge reference, as well as 2001 and Apollo 13. There’s this amazing IMAX doc [called Apollo 11] about the Apollo 11 mission, and it was made for the 50th anniversary in 2019. It is incredible, and it was another huge reference point for us.

[Note: This question/answer contains spoilers.] This is the part where I ask about the mid-credit scene. Was that spot always earmarked for the Russos to fill in later? Or were there other possibilities along the way?

No, we always knew that there would be a tag scene and that Doctor Doom would be a part of it. We had a lot of different ideas of what that scene could be, but we knew it would eventually be shot during the making of Avengers: Doomsday. So once Doomsday started to come together in terms of what story they were telling, it started to become clear what we wanted to do for our tag.

John Malkovich’s Red Ghost. Was he part of the Subterranea story, the crime syndicate subplot or that montage in the opening?

He was part of the opening. He was a part of introducing us to the Fantastic Four — who they are and their powers. But we had so many things to introduce: this new universe, this new earth, this retro-futuristic ‘60s, four main characters and two villains in Galactus and Silver Surfer. So it was a lot, and it just felt like we didn’t have the landscape to properly do justice to that. So I’m sorry Malkovich is not in the film because he was wonderful.

[Note: This question/answer contains spoilers.] I believe Shalla-Bal’s (Julia Garner) flashback was added in the later stages. Was that a response to test audiences and wanting to bolster her inner conflict a bit more?

No, the awakening element of the Surfer was something that evolved throughout the script work and throughout post-production. So it was during post that I felt like I really wanted to see this thing that we talked about, which is the idea of her sacrifice and the decision that she faced in choosing between her family, her planet and her own life. It’s so evocative to the themes of the movie at large and reflective, no pun intended, of the Fantastic Four’s crisis and their conflict, so it felt like it was something we needed to see.

Do you have another Marvel project you’d love to pursue after this? Or are you not getting ahead of yourself?

I’m definitely not getting ahead of myself. It’s been three years of working closely on this one, and it has been a dream come true to work on these characters. I’ve loved the Fantastic Four since I was a kid, and it’s an honor to bring them to the MCU. So I’m just focusing on this one right now.

You’ve obviously been busy, but have you had a chance to watch Agatha All Along yet? They managed to shoot on Blondie Street one last time before Warner Bros. Ranch was sadly torn down.

No, I actually haven’t [had a chance to watch]. I’m so behind. I have seen pretty much nothing over the last year, so I have a lot to catch up on. But it’s incredibly sad [regarding Warner Bros. Ranch]. As a child actor, I grew up working on the Warner Bros. Ranch lot. I did a TV show there called Just the Ten of Us for years. When I was 10, 11 and 12, I’d skateboard on Blondie Street, and I feel very nostalgic and sentimental for it. One of the reasons why I really wanted to shoot Wanda there was to be surrounded by all that great sitcom history. So it’s a shame that it’s gone; it really was a special place.

Decades from now, when you’re reminiscing about the making of Fantastic Four, what day will you likely recall first?

The day that my daughter filmed her part in the movie. This movie is all about family, and I brought so much of my own experience as a husband and as a father. The birth of my daughter was such an amazing moment; it was the most fantastic moment of my life. So the birth in this movie evokes all those feelings that I had on that day, and when the chance to bring her into this movie came up, she really wanted to do this fun little cameo where she’s saved by Johnny Storm. I was so nervous that day, but she was just such a cool customer and she had such a great time. So that will be the day I probably think of first.

As a former child actor, if your daughter expresses an interest in going down that path, will you encourage it?

I’m deeply ambivalent about child acting. It’s a difficult path, but I ended up coming out okay because I had great parents. It’s hard to be professionalized at a young age, and I just think acting, or whatever you choose to do, should come from a place of joy and that you should find your way to it naturally and organically. A lot of child actors end up finding their way to it inorganically, and it’s not something they choose. So whatever my daughter does, I just want to make sure that she’s the one choosing it, and that she knows what she’s signing up for and that she’s coming to it with love.

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The Fantastic Four: First Steps is now playing in movie theaters nationwide.