Fantastic Four: First Steps director Matt Shakman says becoming a parent influenced his approach to the material, and reveals that he even found a spot for his young daughter in the movie.
There’s been multiple attempts to make Marvel’s First Family work on film. First we (nearly) got the Roger Corman movie from the early 1990s, that Marvel doesn’t want you to see.
A pair of fun F4 movies then hit screens in 2005 and 2007, followed by a downbeat adaptation that failed on every front in 2015.
Now in 2025, we’re getting an optimistic Fantastic Four making their debut in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, and the concept of both family and parenthood has been paramount in making this new iteration work.
Why Fantastic Four: First Steps feels personal to director Matt Shakman
In an interview with Variety, Fantastic Four: First Steps director Matt Shakman says he needed to make a a superhero movie he could relate to, through his own lived experience.
Shakman says: “They are parents first. They are scientists and explorers second. And they’re superheroes only when they have to be. I come at this as a dad and as a husband. That’s what makes it so special to me.”
During an early meeting to discuss what Shakman might do with the Fantastic Four – with producer Grant Curtis, and Marvel Studios chief Kevin Feige – Curtis says: “He showed a picture of himself holding his daughter right after she was born. To see how much importance he put into family. When we saw that, I was like, ‘Oh, this is a no-brainer.’”
How parenthood was the key to making F4 work
Shakman says key to unlocking the Fantastic Four was joining the story when Reed Richards and Sue Storm are becoming parents.
Shakman says: “I was 40 when I had my daughter, and she definitely took a little bit of assistance from science. I think anyone who’s tackling something of a large scale has to find something deeply personal in it to connect to.”
Shakman’s daughter is called Maisie, and she even pops up in the movie, being saved by the Human Torch during a spectacular action sequence.
“She really wanted to do it,” says Shakman. “As a recovered child actor, I was deeply ambivalent about it. But she does gymnastics. She got put on wires, got to fly around. She had the best time!”
The Fantastic Four: First Steps hits screens on July 25, 2025. For more F4 action, find out why Fantastic Four takes place on Earth-828, plus how it connects to Avengers: Doomsday and where to get the Fantastic popcorn buckets.
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