“Malkovich, Malkovich. Malkovich? Malkovich!” is what no one will be saying at Marvel Studios’ premiere of the upcoming Fantastic Four: First Steps. Director Matt Shakman confirmed to Variety on Wednesday that the legendary character actor, who was slated to appear as the cosmonaut supervillain Red Ghost, has been cut from the completed movie. The slight against Malkovich-heads arrives 15 years after plans for Spider-Man 4, in which Sam Raimi hoped to cast Malkovich as the Vulture, were officially scrapped.
C’mon, let this man suit up as a comic book villain!
“There were a lot of things that ultimately ended up hitting the cutting room floor,” Shakman told Variety. “When we were building a ’60s retro-future world, introducing all of these villains, introducing these four main characters as a group, as well as individually, introducing the idea of a child — there was a lot of stuff to balance in this movie and some things had to go ultimately in terms of shaping the film for its final version.”
Shakman, who previously worked with Malkovich in his directorial debut, the thriller Cut Bank, cast the actor as Red Ghost, a C-tier Marvel villain. Readers of the first issues of Fantastic Four will remember that Red Ghost hoped to conquer the moon with his gang of hyper-intelligent apes, who he zapped with the same cosmic rays that granted the F4 with powers. According to Variety’s report, Red Ghost would have appeared battling the Fantastic Four in a cold open, which we no longer see and is absolutely terrible news, because look at how perfect this was.
Malkovich can’t catch a break in the comic-book movie business. Back in 2010, before Sony and Marvel pivoted to producing The Amazing Spider-Man with Andrew Garfield as Peter Parker and Marc Webb (500 Days of Summer) in the director’s chair, the two companies were set on continuing with Sam Raimi’s mega-successful Spider-Man franchise. While Spider-Man 3 didn’t earn the raves of the near-masterpiece that was Spider-Man 2, there was general optimism that Raimi and star Tobey Maguire could keep delivering. But as the story goes, Raimi really wanted to cast Malkovich as Vulture, aka bald criminal Adrian Toomes, while Sony wanted Anne Hathaway to play Black Cat as the movie’s central villain, for youth appeal.
It’s a damn shame it all fell apart, because look at how perfect that could have been.
After the success of Spider-Man: No Way Home and Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, Sam Raimi has left his heart open to the possibility of revisiting the Spider-Man property. Which could mean hope for Malkovich, who in theory could follow Michael Keaton as the next screen iteration of the Vulture… I guess?
Or maybe it’s time for Malkovich to move on. We’ll likely see his turn as Red Ghost in deleted scenes from Fantastic Four: First Steps. (Unless there are weird legal/compensation issues involved with releasing those clips, in which case we will never see his turn as Red Ghost in deleted scenes from Fantastic Four: First Steps.) Maybe Marvel could pay him back with a strange what-if cameo, courtesy of a future multiversal romp. But after getting burned twice, I won’t blame Malkovich for turning his back on the MCU. Marvel, you’ve done our boy dirty. Unless you want to cast him as the voice of Beta Ray Bill or something, in which case we’re all in.
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