Marvel Boss Kevin Feige Talks “Fantastic Four,” Recasting a New Tony Stark, Rebooting the X-Men, & More

Marvel super producer Kevin Feige invited select journalists to a conference room at Marvel Studios and revealed more in a single sitting than you often get from someone with the keys to a kingdom as vast as Marvel over the course of a full year.

Sitting in the same room where so many big-time introductions and pitch meetings have occurred, Feige regaled his company with his thoughts on the state of the superhero movie industry, his plans for Marvel’s immediate and long-term future, and more. This freewheeling session came just a week ahead of the July 25 release of The Fantastic Four: First Steps, one of the MCU’s most marquee movies in years, ushering in the long-awaited reboot of Marvel’s First Family, now led by Pedro Pascal as Reed Richards and Vanessa Kirby as Sue Storm, while Marvel’s main competitor, DC Studios, enjoys the glow from their own recent and equally massive reboot, James Gunn’s Superman, which soared once again this past weekend.

“I love how you just jump right into it,” Fiege said about Gunn’s film. “You don’t know who Mr. Terrific is? Tough. You’ll figure it out. You don’t know what this is? Just go, go. This is a fully fleshed-out world.” Gunn, of course, was a former Marvel director, having helmed the Guardians of the Galaxy trilogy for Feige. The director took his sensibility and his love for the comic source material to DC Studios (which he now leads, alongside Peter Safran.)

Feige intimated that the feeling of arriving in a fully-formed world is one of the things he’s excited about in director Matt Shakman’s Fantastic Four, which is set in a retro-futuristic 1960s New York that is not the same New York that has been destroyed (again and again) in various Marvel films to date.

“We didn’t want to have the Eternals issue of ‘Where were they, where have they been, how come they didn’t help with Thanos?’” Feige told the journalists. “We wanted them to be apart from our reality so that we didn’t have to say, ‘Oh look, they were hiding over here.’” As for the retro-futuristic aesthetic, Feige said that there’s a lot more behind the beautifully designed sets than the pure aesthetic pleasure of it. “It was a unique aesthetic that felt like it could absolutely be its own world, its own reality. And when we show it to audiences in the screening process that we do leading up to it, people just accept it right off the bat and feel liberated that they can just enjoy what’s ahead of them…it is no-homework-required.”

Beyond The Fantastic Four, Marvel has the massive Avengers: Doomsday on the horizon, which sees the return of directors Joe and Anthony Russo, who last helmed Marvel’s most successful film, Avengers: Endgame. They bring with them Robert Downey Jr., now in the role of Dr. Doom, the iconic villain from the comics, who will be facing off against a massive list of superheroes and mutants. Doomsday will boast X-Men stars from the 2000s and 2010s, reprising their roles for the film—Patrick Stewart as Professor X, Ian McKellen as Magneto, Alan Cumming as Nightcrawler, Rebecca Romijn as Mystique, James Marsden as Cyclops, and Kelsey Grammer as Beast.

Feige said that the old X-Men cast will eventually give way to new actors in the roles, with these new X-Men making their MCU debut in their own film. Marvel can do this, of course, thanks to the MCU existing in a narrative multiverse, itself born from the comics. The “Secret Wars” storyline from 2015 serves as a key touchstone for the world-building Marvel is currently undertaking, with multiple timelines intersecting and characters being dispersed across them.

Feige also hinted that it won’t just be the X-Men who are getting recast, but some of the MCU mainstays, too, including Tony Stark and Steve Rogers. Feige pointed out that recasting iconic roles is a long-standing tradition in Hollywood.

“Amy Pascal and David Heyman are now searching for a new James Bond,” Feige said, regarding the producers of Amazon MGM’s upcoming Bond mission, with Dune visionary Denis Villeneuve in the director’s chair.  “David [Corenswet], the new Superman — he was awesome. That will always be the case.”

Not that it’s easy to do. Robert Downey Jr. and Chris Evans are massive international stars for a reason; they were perfect as Tony Stark and Steve Rogers. Yet Feige said the same was true of Sean Connery as James Bond, and yet when the role was recast, the franchise continued to flourish.

Then there are mainstays who are staying, like Tom Holland as Peter Parker, who returns for his fourth turn as Spider-Man in the upcoming Spider-Man: Brand New Day,

Feige hinted that the bittersweet ending of No Way Home has opened up storytelling opportunities for Holland to become the Spider-Man that was beloved in the comics, a proper defender of New York City.

“I think there’s a promise at the end of No Way Home, that for as sad as it is that Peter is forgotten by everyone in his life, we are seeing for the first time in the Tom Holland Spider-Man stories him being a proper Spider-Man. Him being by himself, dedicated to saving the city, and dealing with — for lack of better terms — street-level crime, as opposed to world-ending events.”

When you talk about street-level crime in New York City, one name that comes to mind for Marvel fans is the Punisher. Feige discussed how Jon Bernthal’s The Punisher will be a perfect addition to this new commitment that Spider-Man is making.

“So when you do that, you say, okay, who are the other street-level characters that we’ve never seen him interact with? And of course, I love that The Punisher started in a Spider-Man comic. That great cover… I don’t want to say too much, but Destin [Daniel Cretton, the director] — I will say too much — Destin is doing an amazing job right now on that movie, which starts shooting very soon. And he’s got eight or nine comic covers up on his wall in his art department that he is bringing to life in this movie, which is super cool.”

Featured image: Pedro Pascal as Reed Richards/Mister Fantastic in 20th Century Studios/Marvel Studios’ THE FANTASTIC FOUR: FIRST STEPS. Photo courtesy of Marvel Studios. © 2025 20th Century Studios / © and ™ 2025 MARVEL