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Julia Garner Joins ‘The Fantastic Four’ Cast at Marvel

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The latest star plucked from the indie world to join the Marvel Cinematic Universe is Julia Garner , who is set to join the cast of “ The Fantastic Four ,” IndieWire has confirmed.

Garner will reportedly play Shalla-Bal, who first appeared in the original Silver Surfer comics. She is the Empress of the planet that the Silver Surfer calls home and is a centuries-old alien who still has the appearance of a young woman. Other plot details are still under wraps.

Garner joins a cast that includes Pedro Pascal as Mister Fantastic,  Vanessa Kirby  as the Invisible Woman,  Joseph Quinn  as the Human Torch, and  Ebon Moss-Bachrach  as the Thing. Their casting was announced in a Valentine’s Day tweet earlier this year.

Marvel had no comment.

“The Fantastic Four” hits theaters July 25, 2025, pushed from its originally planned date on May 2, 2025, which will now be the home to Marvel’s “Thunderbolts” instead. It’s part of  Marvel’s Phase 6 , which also includes two “Avengers” films and the “Blade” reboot. “Avengers 5” was originally subtitled “The Kang Dynasty” but is being re-named after star Jonathan Majors was dropped from the franchise .

Julia Garner is one of the hottest rising stars in town. She was recently meant to play Madonna in the biopic on the pop sensation’s life, but that project fell apart . Most recently she starred in “The Royal Hotel” and she’s currently filming the “Wolf Man” movie for Universal alongside Christopher Abbott, and she’s also starring in the thriller “Apartment A” for Paramount and producer Michael Bay. She’s won three Emmys for her work on Netflix’s “Ozark” and was also nominated for her work in the Netflix series “Inventing Anna,” where she played fraudster Anna Delvey.

Garner is represented by UTA and LBI Entertainment.

Deadline first reported the news.

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‘Among Us’ Adds Patton Oswalt, Debra Wilson, Phil LaMarr & Wayne Knight To Cast Of Animated Series Based On Game

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Patton Oswalt   ( We All Scream ),  Debra Wilson  ( MADtv ),  Phil LaMarr  ( MADtv ) and  Wayne Knight  ( Seinfeld ) round out the voice cast for Among Us , an animated series based on the highly popular game, from CBS Studios, Innersloth , and creator  Owen Dennis   (Infinity Train) . They join previously announced  Randall Park ,  Ashley Johnson ,  Yvette Nicole Brown , Elijah Wood , Dan Stevens, Liv Hewson and Kimiko Glenn. CBS Studios ‘  animation  arm Eye Animation Productions is currently developing the project in partnership with Innersloth, the independent studio behind the game.

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Per the logline, the series is based on the game’s premise: “Members of your crew have been replaced by an alien shapeshifter intent on causing confusion, sabotaging the ship, and killing everyone. Root out the ‘Impostor’ or fall victim to its murderous designs.”

Character details below:

Oswalt will voice ‘White’ – Contest Winner No trauma, no drama Task: Someone else will get to it. Fun Fact: wealth can be a personality trait

Wilson will voice ‘Yellow’ – Ship Cook #1 Indignant, opinionated, prankster Task: pizza Fun Fact: Best friends with Brown

LaMarr will voice ‘Brown’- Ship Cook #2 Chill, supportive, accountable Task: also pizza Fun Fact: Best friends with Yellow

Knight will voice ‘Lime’ – Engineer Doomsday prepper, conspiracy theorist Task: Getting stuff pretty much mostly fixed-ish Fun Fact: Afraid of intimacy

Titmouse will serve as the animation studio. Dennis executive produces with Forest Willard, Marcus Bromander, and Carl Neisser of Innersloth, along with Titmouse’s Chris Prynoski, Shannon Prynoski, Antonio Canobbio and Ben Kalina.

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The Science Fiction Horror and Fantasy Film Review

Fantastic Voyage (1966)

Rating: ★★★★.

Director – Richard Fleischer, Screenplay – Harry Kleiner, Adaptation – David Duncan, Story – Jay Lewis Bixby [ Jerome Bixby ] & Otto Klement, Producer – Saul David, Photography – Ernest Laszlo, Music – Leonard Rosenman, Photographic Effects – L.B. Abbott, Art Cruickshank & Emil Kosa Jr, Art Direction – Dale Hennesy & Jack Martin Smith, Submarine Design – Harper Goff. Production Company – 20th Century Fox.

Stephen Boyd (Charles Grant), Raquel Welch (Cora Peterson), Donald Pleasence (Dr Maxwell Michaels), Arthur Kennedy (Dr Peter Duval), William Redfield (William Owens), Edmond O’Brien (General Carter), Arthur O’Connell (Colonel Reid)

Scientist Jan Benes defects to the West but an attempted assassination by the other side places him a coma. Agent Charles Grant is recruited by the top-secret organisation Combined Miniaturized Deterrence Forces. He learns that he is to be part of a crew aboard a submarine The Proteus. The crew and submarine will be reduced to microscopic size and injected into the Benes’s bloodstream in order to operate on the surgically inaccessible clot in his brain using a laser. Injected into the body, Grant and the surgical team travel through the bloodstream in the submarine, marvelling at the wonders of the human body seen on a microscopic level. They must reach the brain within 60 minutes or else the effect will wear off and they will return to full-size. However, the voyage is undermined by one of the crew who is an enemy saboteur and is prepared to risk everything to stop the mission.

Fantastic Voyage is one of my all-time favourite science-fiction films. It is one of the most ingenious pieces of pure conceptual science-fiction poetry that the genre has ever created. One can ridicule its problems and holes, which are manyfold, but it is impossible to argue with the conceptual brilliance of the film, the sheer imaginative splendour of the idea of conducting a journey by miniaturised submarine through the human body. The script, which comes in part from science-fiction writer Jerome Bixby, knows exactly what a sense of wonder is. The film creates an amazing view of the human body as a veritable Aladdin’s cave of marvels, more wondrous, colourful and lit up than it could possibly ever be in real life. Even if the superb sets and effects are occasionally beset by grainy mattes lines and the visibility of wires, the imagination of the exercise soars. It is a pure celebration of science-fiction as conceptual poetry rather than as science. Indeed, Fantastic Voyage is an object lesson in what science-fiction can do on screen that the written page can never replicate.

Jerome Bixby originally envisioned the film as a Jules Verne-styled period piece a la the fad for retro-Victorian science-fiction created by Fantastic Voyage director Richard Fleischer’s own 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea (1954). This would have been fascinating – but it was changed during rewriting and the film updated into the Space Age. Now it echoes with the sense that humanity was on the frontier of taking a quantum leap forward and conquering the whole universe. “Maybe the ancient philosophers were right – man is the centre of the universe. Man stands between inner and outer space and there is no limit to either,” says Arthur Kennedy’ Duval during one of his many such pronouncements.

The film is almost a hymn to Space Age technology. Richard Fleischer follows the operation with wonderfully methodical exactitude – the journey through the vast labyrinth by golf cart, the operation being monitored by characters in lab coats on blinking, whirring computers, the submarine slowly being placed on an hexagonal dais, the pickup trolley being wheeled in and the submarine being shrunken in a glass tube and then connected to a syringe. The sense of detail and detached clinicism to the operation is enthralling. Contrast this to the wave of hand that usually produced marvels of super science in 1950s science-fiction or the heated fervour of madness under which discovery was conducted in 1930s and 40s mad scientist films – there is the sense that the future is here right now.

Once inside the body, Fantastic Voyage is dramatically construed as a series of set-pieces involving journeys to a particular part of the body whereupon something goes wrong with regular predictability. It is the things going wrong that makes the story dramatically gripping. The scenes navigating through the temporarily stopped heart, the manned venture into the lungs, and especially the seat-edge suspenseful passage through the inner ear as everybody in the operating room has to remain absolutely still and not make a sound lest they cause the inner ear to vibrate are utterly gripping.

Unfortunately, in the numerous re-writings the script clearly underwent, not much attention was paid to the characters. These are all written to type – the square-jawed jock hero, the curvaceous token female, the atheistic traitor. Stephen Boyd and Raquel Welch, in her first leading role, are both wooden, although this is not a film where one has come expecting penetrating character depth. What is worse is the character of Duval the surgeon who has no other purpose than to stand around and delivers ponderous pronouncements about “the miracle of life.” “40 million beats a year,” someone comments in reference to the heart, to which his reply is “All that stands between man and eternity.” It is a not particularly subtle debate – the side of good shows religious awe at the miraculous nature of the human body, while the contrary opinion represents godless atheism and is ultimately revealed as being a Communist traitor (even if Communism is not directly referred to in the film), not to mention is also the perpetual voice of cowardice and defeatism on the mission.

You cannot deny that there are numerous logic holes in the film. One can forgive minor quibbles such as the impossibility of squeezing normal-size air molecules into a micro-sized snorkel, or how surface tension would make it extremely difficult to swim inside a tear. However, there is one gaping hole that you could drive a full-size submarine through and that is this:– the film establishes that it is necessary that the operation be completed within a 60 minute limit otherwise the crew and submarine will return to full-size. (Interestingly, the dramatics of the journey take longer than 60 minutes to occur on screen). However, at the end of the film, the crew return to full-size but somehow leave a submarine and the body of the traitor behind in Benes’s brain after both have been consumed by a white blood cell. Do the filmmakers somehow think that being consumed by a white blood cell will fail to cause them to return to full size?

Not to mention the fact that at some point between when they complete the operation and swim out, the crew also discard the laser inside the brain. Everybody also seems to have forgotten about the fact that a six foot tall cylinder of water was reduced to the size of a syringe and injected into Benes – indeed, the amount of water injected into Benes’s body is far more than his body mass, which would surely cause him to literally explode when it too returns to normal size.

At least, the producers had the good sense to recruit science-fiction writer Isaac Asimov to write the novelisation Fantastic Voyage (1966), which is one of the finest in the usually creatively impoverished arena of film novelisations, wherein Asimov patched up many of the scientific and plot holes. For all its logical failings, Fantastic Voyage is still one of the most ingenious pieces of total Hollywood bunkum.

There was a short-lived animated tv series Fantastic Voyage (1968-9). There have been plans in the 1990s and sporadically throughout the 2000s to mount a remake as directed by Roland Emmerich of Independence Day (1996) fame. James Cameron also expressed interest, although apparently Roland Emmerich rejected his script. The film was parodied in Joe Dante’s Innerspace (1987) and the Futurama episode Parasites Lost (2001). The basic premise of the miniaturised journey inside a body has been used in two Doctor Who stories The Invisible Enemy (1977) and Into the Dalek (2014), as well as the film Antibody (2002).

Richard Fleischer has directed a number of other genre films – Disney’s classic Jules Verne adaptation 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea (1954), the musical version of Doctor Dolittle (1967), The Boston Strangler (1968), the psycho-thriller See No Evil/Blind Terror (1971), the true life serial killer film 10 Rillington Place (1971), the over-populated future film Soylent Green (1973), Amityville 3-D (1983), and the Robert E. Howard adaptations Conan the Destroyer (1984) and Red Sonja (1985).

The story comes from Jerome Bixby, a writer who dabbled in a number of genres and different media during his career. Bixby wrote several novels, although is mostly known for his short stories. He delivered several scripts for genre movies, including Curse of the Faceless Man (1958), It! The Terror from Beyond Space (1958), The Lost Missile (1958) and The Man from Earth (2007). He also wrote several episodes of Star Trek (1966-9) and the famous It’s a Good Life episode of The Twilight Zone (1959-63), which was later remade as a segment of Twilight Zone – The Movie (1983). David Duncan was also a regular genre writer with the screenplays for the English-language version of Rodan the Flying Monster (1956), The Black Scorpion (1957), The Monster That Challenged the World (1957), Monster on the Campus (1958), The Thing That Couldn’t Die (1958), The Leech Woman (1960) and The Time Machine (1960). The actual screenwriter Harry Kleiner also wrote a number of classic films including Miss Sadie Thompson (1953), Carmen Jones (1953) and Bullitt (1968).

Trailer here

Julia Garner Joins 'The Fantastic Four': See Everyone Else Who's Been Cast

Pedro Pascal, Vanessa Kirby, Joseph Quinn and Eben Moss-Bachrach are set to star in the upcoming MCU film.

Marvel has tapped one of Hollywood's biggest stars for its universe!

On Wednesday, Deadline reported that Julia Garner is set to take on the role of the Silver Surfer in The Fantastic Four . According to the publication, Garner will play the comic book version, Shalla-Bal. The news comes as the quartet of actors making up the iconic quartet was previously announced. 

ET can confirm the reporting from the Deadline article is accurate. 

Pedro Pascal is set to star as Reed Richards, aka Mister Fantastic. Mission: Impossible and The Crown star Vanessa Kirby will play Sue Storm, aka the Invisible Woman. Stranger Things' Joseph Quinn will play Sue's brother, the wisecracking Johnny Storm, aka the Human Torch. And The Bear's Eben Moss-Bacharach will return to the MCU as Ben Grimm, aka The Thing.

Marvel shared the news with a cute illustration of the team in celebration of Valentine's Day.

"Happy Valentine’s Day from Marvel’s First Family! Pedro Pascal, Vanessa Kirby, Ebon Moss-Bachrach, and Joseph Quinn are The Fantastic Four," the post was captioned. "Marvel Studios' #TheFantasticFour, in theaters July 25, 2025."

Marvel president Kevin Feige announced the upcoming film at San Diego Comic-Con in 2022. Originally slated to premiere later this year, The Fantastic Four was likely delayed due to the 2023 SAG-AFTRA and WGA strikes.

Thunderbolts and The Fantastic Four will kick off the MCU's Phase 6, which Feige revealed will "end the Multiverse Saga," concluding with two new Avengers films:  Avengers: The Kang Dynasty  and  Avengers: Secret Wars. 

The Fantastic Four  is set to premiere July 25, 2025.

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Lakeith Stanfield Hints He Was up for Silver Surfer Role, MCU Fans React to Julia Garner Casting

MCU fans take to social media to react to Julia Garner as Silver Surfer while Lakeith Stanfield teases he was up for the Fantastic Four role.

• LaKeith Stanfield hints that he was up for Silver Surfer role in MCU before Julia Garner was cast.
• Many fans excited to see Julia Garner as the cosmic figure in Fantastic Four .
• Rumors suggest Fantastic Four reboot will be set in an alternate universe in the 1960s.

Academy Award nominee and The Harder They Fall star LaKeith Stanfield has hinted that he too was up for the role of The Silver Surfer in the MCU before Ozark star Julia Garner was cast. The actor, who is also known for powerful performances in the likes of Sorry to Bother You and Judas and the Black Messiah , took to social media (in a now mysteriously deleted post) following the Fantastic Four casting news to say...

“Thought it was going to be me but ig.”

Stanfield’s response suggests that the studio was toying with which version of Galactus’ herald The Silver Surfer to use in the Fantastic Four reboot, the male Norrin Radd or the female Shalla-Bal. Evidently, they landed on the latter.

Fans of Stanfield have since responded to the actor’s post with one saying, “You don't need the MCU! You’re to good for them she's to good for them top, but I guess the paycheck was just to strong.” Another adds “NEED YOU AS SILVER SURFER,” while other fans would like to see him as a different Marvel character, “I need to see you as dr doom.”

The 10 Best LaKeith Stanfield Performances, Ranked

Since the revelation that Julia Garner will join the Marvel Cinematic Universe as the cosmic figure known as The Silver Surfer in Fantastic Four , fans too have taken to social media to share their thoughts. Many are excited to see Garner, who has received critical acclaim and three Primetime Emmy Awards for her performance in the Netflix crime series Ozark , take on the role.

Many Have Been Quick to Point out the Existence of a Female Silver Surfer in the Comics

Many of the reactions, though, have been in response to bringing a female Silver Surfer into the fray. For those unaware, there is precedent for this in the pages of Marvel Comics, with many taking issue with (and poking fun at) those claiming that the franchise has gone “woke.”

The casting of Garner has also potentially added weight to the ongoing rumors that Fantastic Four will be set in an alternate universe. These rumors claim that the reboot will be set in the 1960s and will largely take place in a different world somewhere in the MCU multiverse, with the titular team being dragged into the main MCU at the end of the movie.

Marvel Studios finally announced the cast of the upcoming Fantastic Four reboot back in February, revealing that the movie will be led by Pedro Pascal as Reed Richards, aka Mister Fantastic, Vanessa Kirby as Sue Storm, aka Invisible Woman, Ebon Moss-Bachrach as Ben Grimm, aka The Thing, and Joseph Quinn as Johnny Storm, aka Human Torch.

Directed by WandaVision’s Matt Shakman, The Fantastic Four is scheduled to be released in the United States on July 25, 2025, as part of Phase Six of the MCU.

Fantastic Four (2025)

James Cameron Confirms He’s Planning to ‘Go Ahead With’ a ‘Fantastic Voyage’ Remake ‘Very Soon’

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Gallic cinephiles gave James Cameron a hero’s welcome at a Paris masterclass on Thursday, ushering the action auteur onstage with a reception so thunderous that it shook the filmmaker’s oft-unflappable public demeanor.

“That’s the record,” he said in between laughs and in a show of uncommon giddiness. “That’s the record for the longest applause I’ve ever had in my life. Thank you. This is a high point of my career!”

“I wasn’t involved in the layout or the design or any of that,” Cameron told the audience as the applause finally dimmed. “So when I [first] walked through I thought, ‘Wow, this is my whole journey. It all makes sense to me, now for the very first time.’”

Dreams and Nightmares

While Sigourney Weaver flanked her longtime collaborator at the exhibition’s opening vernissage, “Proxima” director Alice Winocour stepped in to lead the talk. Still, the star actress remained a prime subject of conversation – leading to an endearing connection between the two filmmakers.

After Winocour said that she wrote many of her scripts sitting below a framed photo of Weaver as Ellen Ripley, Cameron revealed he had done the very same, writing “Aliens” for an actress he had yet to meet while taking inspiration from her photo.

And though the sequel’s visual universe built on the designs of H.R. Giger, the incoming director made sure to leave his own mark on the material by introducing the Alien Queen. “I think Giger was a little disappointed that we didn’t hire him,” said Cameron, listing off the various biomechanoid features that made the new villain such chilling addition. “But I had so many ideas about what I could do in that same area.”

“[I remembered a dream] where I went into a dark room with every square inch of the walls and ceiling covered in wasps, and I knew that if I moved or tried to escape, they would attack me dead,” he recalled. “Every horror film must go to the deepest and worst place in the subconscious [because] that’s the point. That’s what you to pay your money for.”

‘Avatar’ and Beyond

Given the event’s reflective and retrospective context, Cameron offered little new information about his three upcoming “Avatar” sequels. However, he reassured the audience that work on Part 3 is coming along for an intended late 2025 release and that the scripts for the subsequent volleys are finished, the designs nearly locked and 3D modeling just about to begin.

As for other pursuits, the filmmaker once again brought up his plans to produce a remake of the 1966 tour-through-the-human-body “ Fantastic Voyage ,” a project Cameron and his partner Jon Landau have toyed with for over a decade.

“We’ve been developing it for a number of years, and we plan to go ahead with it very soon,” Cameron said. “Raquel Welch is not available, but we think we can make a pretty good movie.”

Hope and Dread

Without giving any more specifics, Cameron perhaps offered a thematic clue when describing his appreciation for science fiction as a conduit for both hope and dread.

“Science fiction allows us to imagine futures that can emerge from our present day,” he said. “When ‘Star Wars’ came along, science fiction seemed to suddenly become very upbeat, [all about] entertainment and adventure. But the history has always been about warning, about the misuse of technology and the misuse of science.”

“Who gets to decide what’s good for humanity?” he asked. “Machine intelligence will only be a reflection of us. It’ll be us with all our flaws and all of our potentially evil intentions. Yes, that can be good, but the atomic scientists of the 1930s believed [they would unlock] an infinite power source that would abolish starvation… Instead we got Hiroshima and Nagasaki and the Cold War. This is what concerns me.”

Taste for Risk

Reflecting on a career path that began with schlock before building toward some of the highest grossing – and most expensive – films of all time, Cameron saw a clear throughline in his taste for risk.

“The more established you become, the more you risk losing what you’ve already gained,” he said. “But I also think that the greatest risk you can make is not trying something new and different. There’s a tendency, when the budget gets bigger, to start to go for the lowest common denominator – and you cannot do that.”

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Screen Rant

10 tv shows that explain marvel's innovative the fantastic four casting.

The Fantastic Four’s cast has been prevalent in many TV shows over the years, each of which proves their capabilities to play the MCU’s First Family.

• The cast for The Fantastic Four is exciting, with Pedro Pascal, Vanessa Kirby, Joseph Quinn, Ebon Moss-Bachrach, and Julia Garner chosen.
• Shows like The Last of Us, The Mandalorian, The Bear, Andor, and Stranger Things prove why The Fantastic Four's male characters deserve their roles.
• Regarding The Fantastic Four's female actors, shows like The Crown and Ozark prove them to be powerhouse actors.

Marvel's cast for The Fantastic Four is proving to be very exciting, something that is only bolstered by their various roles in past TV shows. Updates about the MCU's Fantastic Four have been regular in recent months, with the film expected to begin filming in the latter half of 2024. This naturally excites many who are looking forward to a faithful adaptation of the Marvel family in the MCU, primarily due to the absence of updates for years after the film was first announced.

The most common update provided about the film is The Fantastic Four 's MCU cast . The four actors responsible for playing the titular team were announced in February 2024, with Pedro Pascal, Vanessa Kirby, Joseph Quinn, and Ebon Moss-Bachrach chosen to play Reed Richards, Sue Storm, Johnny Storm, and Ben Grimm respectively in the upcoming MCU movie . Shortly after this, Julia Garner was announced as the Shalla-Bal, a female version of the Silver Surfer from Marvel Comics. Each of these actors has an extensive TV resume, proving why Marvel Studios was right to cast each one for The Fantastic Four.

All Marvel Movies Releasing In 2024

10 the last of us highlights why pedro pascal is perfect for the mcu, hbo's video game adaptation highlights pascal's talent and features an unusual setting..

In 2023, Pedro Pascal played Joel Miller, the lead in HBO's The Last of Us . This TV show proved in several ways why Pascal is perfect for the role of Mister Fantastic in the MCU. Firstly, and perhaps most obviously, The Last of Us was an exceptional showcase of Pascal's talents . Joel is an incredibly complex character, ranging from heroic, fatherly, and kindhearted to dark, dangerous, and selfish. Pascal played each of these to perfection, earning him an Emmy nomination for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Drama Series.

Pascal lost out on the Emmy to Kieran Culkin for the latter's performance as Roman Roy in Succession.

Aside from The Last of Us perfectly highlighting Pascal's talent, the show also proved he can make a somewhat unusual universe feel real. While The Last of Us has an incredibly grounded tone anyway, Pascal's human performance even further grounded the show's zombie-infested, atypical universe in reality . This bodes well for The Fantastic Four and how Pascal can make Reed Richards a linchpin of normalcy in the film that is rumored to feature otherworldly characters like Galactus and be set in its own, different universe from the norm of the MCU.

The Last Of Us

Based on the critically acclaimed video game The Last of Us developed by Naughty Dog, the story of the TV series takes place twenty years after a parasitic fungal infection wreaks havoc across the world that turns humans into zombie-like creatures. Joel (Pedro Pascal) agrees to smuggle a 14-year-old girl named Ellie (Bella Ramsey) out of a quarantine zone, only to discover she may be the key to discovering a cure. The Last of Us TV series is a collaborative effort between one of the original creators, Neil Druckmann, and the creator of the award-winning HBO series Chernobyl.

9 The Crown Shows Vanessa Kirby Can Add Depth To Sue Storm

Kirby's most well-known tv role proves the incredibly compelling nature she can bring to the invisible woman..

Kirby's main credits come in the film industry, though her breakthrough role to get to this point came in Netflix's The Crown . Playing Princess Margaret, Kirby's role in The Crown is somewhat similar to that of Pascal's in The Last of Us , if only to showcase the depth the former can bring to The Fantastic Four . Margaret is one of The Crown 's most complex characters , a princess of the British royal family who resents the lack of freedom the titular headpiece brings while striving to maintain that same freedom at all costs.

All of this is delivered masterfully by Kirby, with the actor often stealing each scene she was in throughout the first two seasons of The Crown .

This allows Kirby to imbue Margaret with a range of emotions, from passive-aggressiveness toward her family to sheer heartbreak at what the crown took from her. All of this is delivered masterfully by Kirby, with the actor often stealing each scene she was in throughout the first two seasons of The Crown . While The Fantastic Four 's Sue Storm is naturally an incredibly different character in a different environment of a polar-opposite franchise to Margaret from The Crown , the latter is a showcase for the compelling depth Kirby can bring to the former's matriarchal character.

Like Pascal with The Last of Us, Kirby also received an Emmy nomination for her role in The Crown,

The Crown is a Netflix Historical Drama created by Peter Morgan and starring Claire Foy, Olivia Colman, and Imelda Staunton. The series follows the life of ruler Queen Elizabeth II, outlining different points in her life.

8 Stranger Things Proved Joseph Quinn Could Be An MCU Star

Eddie munson's season-stealing character exemplified how much star quality joseph quinn possesses..

The following section contains major spoilers for Stranger Things.

Throughout Stranger Things ' first three seasons, new characters like Max, Billy, and Bob fit perfectly into the core cast. Stranger Things season 4 continued this trend, only to an even bigger degree, with the inclusion of Joseph Quinn as Eddie Munson. While still exhibiting the range of Kirby and Pascal's aforementioned performances, the biggest element of Quinn's was the sheer star power he exhibited. Munson quickly became a fan-favorite, even to the point where theories, online riots, and backlash were directed at the show to explain how he could still be alive after Stranger Things 4 's tragic ending.

This would not have been possible without the exuberant, star-making performance of Quinn in the role. While the aforementioned characters like Billy and Bob were well-received, neither of their deaths received the outcry that Eddie's did. This alone is a testament to the ability Quinn has to be a leading man or at least the charismatic standout of a larger ensemble. With this in mind, Stranger Things proved how Quinn could transfer that star power to the MCU, which will hopefully transpire when he brings Johnny Storm a.k.a. the Human Torch to life in The Fantastic Four ​​​​​​.

Stranger Things

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Inspired by 80s pop-culture and elements of Stephen King's works, Stranger Things is a supernatural action-drama TV series set in the fictional town of Hawkins, Indiana. When a young boy goes missing, his group of friends stumbles upon a young girl with telekinetic powers who recently escaped from a mysterious facility. They soon realize that she may be their only chance at stopping an impending doom that threatens to engulf Hawkins whole.

7 The Bear Gives Ebon Moss-Bachrach A Chance To Demonstrate His Acting Prowess

Moss-bachrach shines as arguably the strongest character in the bear..

Above each show mentioned thus far, The Bear provides the strongest character arc for the characters in question via Ebon Moss-Bachrach's Richie Jerimovich. While Joel, Margaret, and Eddie naturally have character arcs, none are quite as drastic as Richie's. Despite the radical change of the character, it never feels unnatural or unwarranted, which is primarily driven by Moss-Bachrach's acting talent.

This proves the talent Moss-Bachrach possesses, with The Bear perhaps proving more than other shows how perfect he is for the role of Ben Grimm...

At the beginning of The Bear season 1, Richie is a sarcastic, irritable, unlikeable person who makes the environment of the show's setting much more stressful. That said, Moss-Bachrach imbues Richie with an equal amount of humor, making him a character many love to dislike. As the show progresses, he switches to become one of the more sympathetic, calm, and assured characters on the show in a fantastic arc. This proves the talent Moss-Bachrach possesses, with The Bear perhaps proving more than other shows how perfect he is for the role of Ben Grimm due to his emotional range as an actor.

Set in a Chicago sandwich shop, The Bear follows Carmy Berzatto, a young professionally trained chef who returns to take over his family business after the unexpected death of his brother. At odds with many of the shop's employees due to his culinary training, Carmy struggles to maintain order and keep the shop from failing entirely. Jeremy Allen White stars as Carmy alongside Ebon Moss-Bachrach and Ayo Edebiri. 

6 Game Of Thrones Shows Pedro Pascal's Range

Another hbo show allows pascal's range to shine through in a way the last of us does not..

While The Last of Us shows Pascal's range as a subdued, quieter character, Game of Thrones does the same for a charismatic, charming character type via Oberyn Martell. Pascal first appears as Oberyn in Game of Thrones season 4 as a seemingly unserious, man-and-womanizer with an air of mystery about him. As the season progresses, more about Oberyn's character is revealed which changes the outlook on his character, spearheaded by Pascal's performance.

Reed can be both the quiet intellectual and the eccentric, likable superhero, something Pascal has shown he can switch between via The Last of Us and Game of Thrones.

By the end of Game of Thrones season 4, Pascal switches to a vengeful, skillful warrior albeit one who retains his calmness in quieter moments. These contrasting personalities show Pascal's range as a more over-the-top character than Joel , with both combining to make him perfect for Reed Richards. Reed can be both the quiet intellectual and the eccentric, likable superhero, something Pascal has shown he can switch between via The Last of Us and Game of Thrones.

Game Of Thrones

Created by David Benioff and D.B. Weiss, Game of Thrones is a TV series based on the book “A Song of Ice of Fire” by George R. R. Martin. It tells the story of the ongoing battle between the Seven Kingdoms of Westeros - as they fight for control of the coveted Iron Throne. Friction between the houses leads to full-scale war. All while a very ancient evil awakens in the far north. Amidst the war, a neglected military order of misfits, the Night's Watch, led by House Stark's Jon Snow, is the first to encounter icy horrors that threaten all realms of men. The series premiered on HBO in the United States on April 17, 2011, and quickly became one of the biggest event series in the "Golden Age" of TV. Winner of 38 Primetime Emmy Awards, Game of Thrones has attracted record viewership on HBO and has a broad, active, international fan base.

5 Ozark Lets Audiences See Julia Garner's Talent

Ozark is a showcase for the powerhouse acting garner could be capable of as the silver surfer..

Perhaps the standout performer of Ozark is Julia Garner as Ruth. Ruth is somewhat of an antagonist to the show's main characters, though Garner plays the role with such depth and nuance that she is hard not to root for. This alone proves how perfect Garner would be for the Silver Surfer, who has long been an antagonist of The Fantastic Four, yet one who is sympathetic and can even act as a hero when needed.

Ruth's independent, no-nonsense, tough attitude is portrayed perfectly by Garner , something that could also translate to the Silver Surfer in The Fantastic Four. All of this is offset by the emotional performance Garner gives, especially in the latter seasons of Ozark , which proves just how talented she is. Even more so than Pascal, Kirby, and Moss-Bachrach, Garner's talents were recognized by awarding bodies. For her role as Ruth in Ozark , she has won three Primetime Emmy Awards for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Drama Series, truly proving her credentials and the fantastic coup Marvel secured for The Fantastic Four.

Ozark is a drama-thriller that follows the Byrde family’s journey from their everyday, suburban Chicago life to their dangerous criminal enterprise in the Ozarks, Missouri. When financial advisor Marty Byrde sees a money-laundering scheme for a prolific Mexican drug cartel go wrong, he is forced to launder $500 million in five years to keep himself and his family safe. The series explores capitalism, family dynamics, and survival through the eyes of (anything but) ordinary Americans. 

4 Andor Proves Ebon Moss-Bachrach Can Make An Impact On Big Franchises

Moss-bachrach has tried his hand at major franchises before..

Despite The Bear outranking Andor regarding how much it exemplified Moss-Bachrach's range, the latter proved he could impact larger franchises. Moss-Bachrach appeared in three episodes of Andor season 1 as Arvel Skeen, a man with a bitter grudge against the Empire. While Skeen's arc is not as pronounced as Richie's, the character is one of the more memorable in the show.

Moss-Bachrach can more than handle the inflated budgets, larger productions, and more wide-reaching stories of Disney franchises.

This proves how Moss-Bachrach can leave his imprint on franchises like Star Wars , or in The Fantastic Four 's case, the MCU. Skeen's arc is still compelling, which is mostly driven by Moss-Bachrach's performance as well as Dan Gilroy's writing . That said, it is more so the lasting impact Skeen has on the characters around him that proves Moss-Bachrach can more than handle the inflated budgets, larger productions, and more wide-reaching stories of Disney franchises.

Diego Luna stars as Cassian Andor in Andor, a Disney+ exclusive series set five years before Rogue One. The series follows the titular character as he transitions from a humble thief to a revolutionary icon of the rebellion against the empire. Cassian, a man who tries to keep himself out of confrontations post the destruction of his world, is shoved into the central conflict as he naturally slots into the role of leader. Andor will explore the rebellion's burgeoning days and highlight pivotal events in the Star Wars Franchise before the construction of the Death Star. 

3 Pedro Pascal's The Mandalorian Role Lends Itself To Fantastic Four's Family Dynamic

Din djarin's paternal character will aid pascal's portrayal of reed richards..

Like Moss-Bachrach, Pedro Pascal has also made an impact on the Star Wars galaxy. Pascal has portrayed, or more aptly voiced, the role of Din Djarin in The Mandalorian since 2019. This character, like Andor 's Skeen, proves Pascal can handle major franchises. However, where the role of Din Djarin will impact Pascal's Reed Richards performance the most is in the former's familial aspects .

First and foremost, Din Djarin is portrayed as a father in The Mandalorian . The heart of the show entirely surrounds Din's connection with his adopted son, Grogu. Through this character dynamic, Pascal has perfected the art of acting as a father, something that also was the case in The Last of Us . With a big portion of Reed Richards' comic book character centering around his love for his children, Franklin and Valeria, Pascal will already have the tools necessary to bring this to life in the MCU.

Franklin and Valeria are not confirmed to be in The Fantastic Four, though strong rumors and reports suggest this will soon change.

The Mandalorian

The Mandalorian is set after the Empire's fall and before the First Order's emergence in the ever-growing Star Wars universe. The series follows the travails of a lone gunfighter named Din Djarin (Pedro Pascal) in the outer reaches of the galaxy, far from the authority of the New Republic. Acting as the first live-action Star Wars series, The Mandalorian has become incredibly popular on Disney+, partly due to Mando’s relationship with Grogu, which the internet dubbed “Baby Yoda” upon his introduction in season 1.

2 Dickensian Gave Joseph Quinn The Platform To Become Johnny Storm

Quinn's personality as johnny can be taken from his prior roles..

In Dickensian , Joseph Quinn portrays Arthur Havisham from Charles Dickens' novels. This character is largely known as a rebellious, free-spirited boy, something Quinn captured in the BBC's Dickensian . In a way, Eddie Munson also exhibited this personality in Stranger Things , meaning Quinn has a lot of experience in that regard.

This experience would undoubtedly translate well to the role of Johnny Storm/the Human Torch. In Marvel Comics, Johnny Storm has often been shown to be rebellious and free-spirited himself. These personality traits naturally extend to others that Johnny is often depicted as having, such as being impulsive, quick-tempered, and reckless. These can all extend to Havisham in Dickensian , which will aid Quinn's performance. While the Dickensian role was more antagonistic, Quinn clearly has the talent to take these traits and make them as compelling and heroic as Johnny should be.

1 Ebon Moss-Bachrach Already Proved He Can Handle The MCU In The Punisher

The character of micro is enough of an mcu showcase to prove moss-bachrach's casting as the thing was correct..

Of the confirmed cast members for The Fantastic Four thus far, only Ebon Moss-Bachrach has appeared in the MCU . The actor played one of the main characters in The Punisher , an ally to Jon Bernthal's titular antihero. Moss-Bachrach's performance as Micro was great, but it offered no more than the aforementioned performances in The Bear or Andor .

Moss-Bachrach already knows what it is like to portray a character in the MCU, including the ins and outs of a big-budget Marvel production.

That said, what Moss-Bachrach's performance in The Punisher does provide is MCU experience. Moss-Bachrach already knows what it is like to portray a character in the MCU, including the ins and outs of a big-budget Marvel production. While the CGI-based performance of The Thing will differ from Micro, it remains the case that the actor has Marvel experience his peers lack. Through this, and the myraid other TV shows mentioned, the casting of The Fantastic Four by Marvel Studios has been proven innovative, effective, and well-done.

The Punisher

The Punisher stars Jon Bernthal as Frank Castle/The Punisher, who first appeared on Netflix's  Daredevil . Frank is a United States Marine Corps Scout Sniper veteran who is highly skilled in martial arts, stealth tactics, guerrilla warfare, and knows how to use a variety of weapons. The death of his wife and two children led him to take matters into his own hands, and he has been killing criminals indiscriminately ever since. Despite being beloved by fans, The Punisher was canceled in early 2019. Thankfully for fans of Bernthal’s character, it was announced in 2023 that he would be joining the MCU by appearing in Daredevil: Born Again , starring Charlie Cox .

Key Release Dates

Deadpool & wolverine, marvel's thunderbolts, marvel's fantastic four, blade (2025), avengers: the kang dynasty, avengers: secret wars.

• Fantastic Voyage

Fantastic Voyage is a 1966 American science fiction adventure film directed by Richard Fleischer and written by Harry Kleiner , based on a story by Otto Klement and Jerome Bixby . The film is about a submarine crew who is shrunk to microscopic size and venture into the body of an injured scientist to repair damage to his brain. [4] [5] [6] [7] In adapting the story for his script, Kleiner abandoned all but the concept of miniaturization and added a Cold War element. The film starred Stephen Boyd , Raquel Welch , Edmond O'Brien , Donald Pleasence , and Arthur Kennedy .

Awards and honors

Adaptations, novelization, animated television series, other adaptations, cancelled sequel/remake, similarly-themed works, external links.

Bantam Books obtained the rights for a paperback novelization based on the screenplay and approached Isaac Asimov to write it. [8] [9] Because the novelization was released six months before the movie, many people mistakenly believed that the film was based on Asimov's book. Its modern and imaginative production design received five nominations at the 39th Academy Awards mostly in technical departments, winning for Best Visual Effects and Best Art Direction in Color .

The movie used the concept of miniaturization in science fiction along with The Incredible Shrinking Man and inspired an animated television series of the same name .

The United States and the Soviet Union have both developed technology that can miniaturize matter by shrinking individual atoms, but only for one hour. A scientist, Dr. Jan Benes, working behind the Iron Curtain , has figured out how to make the process work indefinitely. With the help of American intelligence agents, including agent Charles Grant, he escapes to the West and arrives in New York City , but an attempted assassination leaves him comatose with a blood clot in his brain that no surgery can remove from the outside.

To save his life, Grant, Navy pilot Captain Bill Owens, medical chief and circulatory specialist Dr. Michaels, surgeon Dr. Peter Duval, and his assistant Cora Peterson are placed aboard a Navy ichthyology submarine at the Combined Miniature Deterrent Forces (CMDF) facilities. The submarine, named Proteus , is then miniaturized to "about the size of a microbe", and injected into Benes' body. The team has 60 minutes to get to and remove the clot; after this, Proteus and its crew will begin reverting to their normal size, become vulnerable to Benes's immune system, and kill Benes.

The crew faces many obstacles during the mission. An undetected arteriovenous fistula forces them to detour through the heart, where cardiac arrest must be induced to, at best, reduce turbulence that would be strong enough to destroy Proteus . The crew faces an unexplained loss of oxygen and must replenish their supply in the lungs. They notice "rocks" that are actually carbon particles from smoke. Grant finds the surgical laser needed to destroy the clot was damaged from the turbulence in the heart, as it was not fastened down as it had been before: this and his safety line snapping loose while the crew was refilling their air supply lead Grant to suspect a saboteur is on the mission. The crew must cannibalize their wireless radio to repair the laser, cutting off all communication and guidance from the outside, although because the submarine is nuclear-powered, surgeons and technicians outside Benes's body are still able to track their movements via a radioactive tracer, allowing General Alan Carter and Colonel Donald Reid, the officers in charge of CMDF, to figure out the crew's strategies as they make their way through the body.

The sub enters the lymphatic system , but the reticular fibres started to interfere. The crew is then forced to pass through the inner ear, requiring all outside personnel to make no noise to prevent destructive shocks, but while the crew is removing reticular fibers clogging the submarine's vents and making the engines overheat, a fallen surgical tool causes the crew to be thrown about and Peterson is nearly killed by antibodies , but they are able to reboard the submarine in time. By the time they finally reach the clot, the crew has only six minutes remaining to operate and then exit the body.

Before the mission, Grant had been briefed that Duval was the prime suspect as a potential surgical assassin, but as the mission progresses, he instead begins to suspect Michaels. During the surgery, Dr. Michaels knocks out Owens and takes control of Proteus while the rest of the crew is outside for the operation. As Duval finishes removing the clot with the laser, Michaels tries to crash the submarine into the same area of Benes' brain to kill him. Grant fires the laser at the ship, causing it to veer away and crash, and Michaels to get trapped in the wreckage with the controls pinning him to the seat, which attracts the attention of white blood cells . While Grant saves Owens from the Proteus , Michaels is killed when a white blood cell consumes the ship. The remaining crew quickly swim to one of Benes' eyes and escape through a tear duct seconds before returning to normal size.

• Stephen Boyd as Charles Grant, a CIA Agent enlisted to protect Benes
• Raquel Welch as Cora Peterson, the technical assistant for Dr. Duval
• Edmond O'Brien as General Alan Carter, one of the officers in charge of Combined Miniature Deterrent Forces
• Donald Pleasence as Dr. Michaels, CMDF's medical chief and a circulatory specialist later revealed to be the saboteur of the mission
• Arthur O'Connell as Colonel Donald Reid, the operational commander for CMDF
• William Redfield as Captain Bill Owens, a U.S. Navy officer who designed the Proteus for his branch's research and development program
• Arthur Kennedy as Dr. Peter Duval, a top-class brain surgeon enlisted to perform the surgery on Benes
• Jean Del Val as Dr. Jan Benes, the comatose scientist who perfected the formula for unlimited miniaturization
• Barry Coe as communications aide
• Ken Scott as a Secret Service agent
• Shelby Grant as nurse
• James Brolin as technician

The film was the original idea of Otto Klement and Jerome Bixby . They sold it to Fox, which announced the film would be "the most expensive science-fiction film ever made." Richard Fleischer was assigned to direct and Saul David to produce; both men had worked at the studio before. [10] Fleischer had originally studied medicine and human anatomy in college before choosing to be a movie director. Harry Kleiner was brought in to work on the script. [11]

The budget was set at $5 million. [12] The budget went up to $6 million, $3 million of which went on the sets and $1 million on test footage. [11]

The Proteus submarine was constructed as a full-size set piece 42 feet long, first seen in the "miniaturizer" room and later in scenes set outside the lung and inside the inner ear, when the cast was to be seen "swimming" (actually suspended by wires) outside the submarine. The full-size Proteus mockup contained all the interior sets that the actors are seen in to represent the interior of the submarine, with sections that could be pulled out to allow for cameras and crew to film the interior. The submarine was also constructed in miniature, including a large miniature around five feet in length that could be flown on wires in the abstract sets representing the inside of the human body. The heart and brain sets built to accommodate the five-foot miniature filled a soundstage on the Fox lot—these were filmed "dry for wet," with floating, blob-shaped elements meant to be blood cells filmed separately and composited over the footage. A smaller, 18-inch miniature of the Proteus was constructed to operate in liquid for a shot of the submarine bursting through an arterial wall early in the movie. A tiny Proteus miniature just a few inches in length was made for the miniaturization sequence to show the ship being picked up by a "precision handling device" and dropped into a large glass cylinder which was then miniaturized to become part of a syringe that would inject the Proteus into the brain-injured scientist. [13]

The film starred Stephen Boyd, making his first Hollywood movie in five years. It was the first role at Fox for Raquel Welch, who was put under contract to the studio after being spotted in a beauty contest by Saul David's wife. [14]

For the technical and artistic elaboration of the subject, Fleischer asked for the collaboration of two people of the crew that he had worked with on the production of 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea , the film he directed for Walt Disney in 1954. The designer of the Nautilus from the Jules Verne adaptation, Harper Goff , also designed the Proteus; the same technical advisor, Fred Zendar, collaborated on both productions. [15]

At one point in the movie's preproduction it was positioned as one of the Derek Flint spy spoof movies starring James Coburn, which were produced by 20th Century Fox and Saul David. Several script pages sampled in the bonus features of the 2012 DVD release of Fantastic Voyage show Stephen Boyd's Grant character (who, like Flint, is a secret agent) being identified as Flint, and some of Flint's wisecracks about not wanting to be miniaturized survive to be uttered by Boyd's Grant in Fantastic Voyage. Years later comic actor Mike Myers proposed making an installment of his own Austin Powers spy spoof movies called Shagtastic Voyage, in which Powers would be injected into the body of Dr. Evil.

The military headquarters is 100   m ×   30   m (328   ft ×   98   ft) and the Proteus 14   m ×   8   m (46   ft ×   26   ft) . The artery, in resin and fiberglass, is 33   m (108   ft) long and 7   m (23   ft) wide; the heart is 45   m ×   10   m (148   ft ×   33   ft) and the brain is 70   m ×   33   m (230   ft ×   108   ft) . The plasma effect was produced by chief operator Ernest Laszlo via the use of multicolored turning lights, placed on the outside of translucent decors. [16]

"There are no precedents so we must proceed by trial and error", said David. [12]

Frederick Schodt 's book The Astro Boy Essays: Osamu Tezuka, Mighty Atom, and the Manga/Anime Revolution claims that Fox had wanted to use ideas from an episode of Japanese animator Osamu Tezuka 's Astro Boy in the film, but it never credited him.

Isaac Asimov, asked to write the novelization from the script, declared that the script was full of plot holes , and received permission to write the book the way he wanted. The novel came out first because he wrote quickly and because of delays in filming. [17]

The score was composed and conducted by Leonard Rosenman . The composer deliberately wrote no music for the first four reels of the film, before the protagonists enter the human body. Rosenman wrote that "the harmony for the entire score is almost completely atonal except for the very end when our heroes grow to normality". [18]

The film received mostly positive reviews and a few criticisms. The weekly entertainment-trade magazine Variety gave the film a positive pre-release review, stating, "The lavish production, boasting some brilliant special effects and superior creative efforts, is an entertaining, enlightening excursion through inner space—the body of a man." [19] Bosley Crowther of The New York Times wrote, "Yessir, for straight science-fiction, this is quite a film—the most colorful and imaginative since Destination Moon " (1950). [20] Richard Schickel of Life magazine wrote that the rewards would be "plentiful" to audiences who get over the "real whopper" of suspended disbelief required. He found that though the excellent special effects and sets could distract from the scenery's scientific purpose in the story, the "old familiar music of science fiction" in lush new arrangements was a "true delight", and the seriousness with which screenwriter Kleiner and director Fleischer treated the story made it more believable and fun. Schickel made note of, but dismissed, other critics' allegations of " camp ." [21]

As of 2023 [ update ] , the film holds a 92% approval rating at review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes from 36 reviews, with an average rating of 7/10. The website's critics consensus reads: "The special effects may be a bit dated today, but Fantastic Voyage still holds up well as an imaginative journey into the human body." [22]

According to Fox records, the film needed to earn $9,400,000 in rentals to break even and made $8,880,000, meaning it initially showed a slight loss, but television sales moved it into the black, and subsequent home video sales were almost entirely profit. [23]

The film won two Academy Awards and was nominated for three more: [24]

• Academy Awards (1966)

After acquiring the film's paperback novelization rights, Bantam Books approached Isaac Asimov to write the novelization, offering him a flat sum of $5,000 with no royalties involved. In his autobiography In Joy Still Felt , Asimov writes, "I turned down the proposal out of hand. Hackwork, I said. Beneath my dignity." [17] However, Bantam Books persisted, and at a meeting with Marc Jaffe and Marcia Nassiter on April 21, 1965, Asimov agreed to read the screenplay.

In the novelization's introduction, Asimov states that he was reluctant to write the book because he believed that the miniaturization of matter was physically impossible, but he decided that it was still good fodder for story-telling and that it could still make for some intelligent reading. In addition, 20th Century Fox was known to want someone with some science-fiction clout to help promote the film. Aside from the initial "impossibility" of the shrinking machine, Asimov went to great lengths to portray with great accuracy what it would actually be like to be reduced to infinitesimal scale. He discussed the ability of the lights on the submarine to penetrate normal matter, issues of time distortion, and other side effects that the movie does not address. Asimov was also bothered by the way the wreck of Proteus was left in Benes. In a subsequent meeting with Jaffe, he insisted that he would have to change the ending so that the submarine was brought out. Asimov also felt the need to gain permission from his usual science-fiction publisher, Doubleday, to write the novel. Doubleday did not object, and had suggested his name to Bantam in the first place. Asimov began work on the novel on May 31, and completed it on July 23. [25]

In the film, the crew (apart from the saboteur) manage to leave Benes's body safely before reverting to normal size, but the Proteus remains inside, as do the remains of the saboteur's body (albeit digested by a white blood cell ), and several gallons (full scale) of a carrier solution (presumably saline) used in the injection syringe. Isaac Asimov pointed out that this was a serious logical flaw in the plot, [26] since the submarine (even if reduced to bits of debris) would also revert to normal size, killing Benes in the process. Therefore, in his novelization Asimov had the crew provoke the white cell into following them, so that it drags the submarine to the tear duct, and its wreckage expands outside Benes's body. Asimov solved the problem of the syringe fluid by having the staff inject only a very small amount of miniaturized fluid into Benes, minimizing its effect on him when it expands.

Asimov did not want any of his books, even a film novelization, to appear only in paperback, so in August, he persuaded Austin Olney of Houghton Mifflin to publish a hardcover edition, [27] assuring him that the book would sell at least 8000 copies, which it did. [28] However, since the rights to the story were held by Otto Klement, who had co-written the original story treatment, Asimov would not be entitled to any royalties. By the time the hardcover edition was published in March 1966, Houghton Mifflin had persuaded Klement to allow Asimov to have a quarter of the royalties. [29] Klement also negotiated for The Saturday Evening Post to serialize an abridged version of the novel, and he agreed to give Asimov half the payment for it. Fantastic Voyage (abridged to half its length) appeared in the February 26 and March 12, 1966, issues of the Post. [30] Bantam Books released the paperback edition of the novel in September 1966 to coincide with the release of the film. [31] Harry Harrison , reviewing the Asimov novelization, called it a "Jerry-built monstrosity", praising the descriptions of science-fiction events as "Asimov at his best", while condemning the narrative framework as "inane drivel". [32]

Fantastic Voyage is an American animated science fiction TV series based on the film. [33] The series consists of 17 half-hour episodes, airing Saturday mornings on ABC-TV from September 14, 1968, through January 4, 1969, then rebroadcast the following fall season. The series was produced by Filmation Associates in association with 20th Century Fox . A Fantastic Voyage comic book, based on the series, was published by Gold Key and lasted two issues. [34]

A comic book adaptation of the film was released by Gold Key Comics in 1967. Drawn by Wally Wood , the book followed the plot of the movie with general accuracy, but many scenes were depicted differently and/or outright dropped, and the ending was given an epilogue similar as that seen in some of the early draft scripts for the film. [35] [36]

A parody of the film titled "Fantastecch Voyage" was published in Mad Magazine . It was illustrated by Mort Drucker and written by Larry Siegel in issue #110, April 1967. [37] The advertising-business-themed spoof has the crew—from L.S.M.F.T. (Laboratory Sector for Making Folks Tiny)—sent to inject decongestant into a badly plugged-up nose.

The film was adapted into a video game for Atari 2600 in 1982 by Fox Video Games . [38]

Fantastic Voyage II: Destination Brain (1987) was written by Isaac Asimov as an attempt to develop and present his own story apart from the 1966 screenplay. This novel is not a sequel to the original, but instead is a separate story taking place in the Soviet Union with an entirely different set of characters.

Fantastic Voyage: Microcosm is a third interpretation, written by Kevin J. Anderson , published in 2001. This version has the crew of the Proteus explore the body of a dead alien that crash-lands on earth, and updates the story with such modern concepts as nanotechnology (replacing killer white cells ). [ citation needed ]

Plans for a sequel or remake have been in discussion since at least 1984, but as of the beginning of July 2015, the project remained stuck in development hell . In 1984, Isaac Asimov was approached to write Fantastic Voyage II , out of which a movie would be made. [39] Asimov "was sent a suggested outline" that mirrored the movie Innerspace and "involved two vessels in the bloodstream, one American and one Soviet, and what followed was a kind of submicroscopic version of World War III." [39] Asimov was against such an approach. Following a dispute between publishers, the original commissioners of the novel approached Philip José Farmer , who "wrote a novel and sent [in] the manuscript" that was rejected despite "stick[ing] tightly to the outline [that was sent to Asimov]." [39] "It dealt with World War III in the bloodstream, and it was full of action and excitement." [39] Although Asimov urged the publisher to accept Farmer's manuscript, it was insisted that Asimov write the novel. So, Asimov eventually wrote the book in his own way (completely different in plot from what [Farmer] had written), which was eventually published by Doubleday in 1987 as Fantastic Voyage II and "dealt not with competing submarines in the bloodstream, but with one submarine, with [an] American hero cooperating (not entirely voluntarily) with four Soviet crew members." [39] The novel was not made into a movie, however.

James Cameron was also interested in directing a remake (since at least 1997), [40] but decided to devote his efforts to his Avatar project. He still remained open to the idea of producing a feature based on his own screenplay, and in 2007, 20th Century Fox announced that pre-production on the project was finally underway. Roland Emmerich agreed to direct, but rejected the script written by Cameron. [40] [41] Marianne and Cormac Wibberley were hired to write a new script, but the 2007–2008 Writers Guild of America strike delayed filming, and Emmerich began working on 2012 instead. [41] [42]

In spring 2010, Paul Greengrass was considering directing the remake from a script written by Shane Salerno and produced by James Cameron , but later dropped out to be replaced by Shawn Levy . It was intended that the film be shot in native stereoscopic 3D. [43]

In January 2016, The Hollywood Reporter reported that Guillermo del Toro was in talks to direct the reboot by reteaming with David S. Goyer , who was writing the film's script with Justin Rhodes with Cameron still on the film by his production company Lightstorm Entertainment . [44] In August 2017, it was reported that del Toro had postponed working on the film to completely focus on his film The Shape of Water , due to release the same year, and he would start pre-production in spring 2018 and would begin filming in the fall of the same year for a 2020 release. [45]

• The Invisible Enemy , a 1977 four-part serial of the British TV series Doctor Who is said to have been inspired by the film. In it, the Doctor 's body is possessed by an evil virus, so a doctor creates clones of his companion Leela and himself to enter his head to search for the virus and destroy it. [46]
• The 1987 film Innerspace follows a similar plotline, this time concerning a test pilot being miniaturized and injected into a store clerk, although accidentally. [47]
• The live-action/animated comedy film Osmosis Jones stars a white cell cop trying to stop a deadly virus from destroying the human he guards. [47] [48]

The concept of entering the human body popularized by Fantastic Voyage has been greatly influential especially in animated TV shows, of which there are several examples:

• Captain Planet and the Planeteers episode "An Inside Job" features The Planeteers battling water-borne parasites in Kwame's body so that he can recover. [48]
• SpongeBob SquarePants episode " Squidtastic Voyage " spoofs the film, with SpongeBob and Patrick attempting to retrieve Squidward's clarinet reed after he swallows it. [48] Other Nicktoons have used the Fantastic Voyage template, such as the Rugrats episode " The Inside Story ", involving the babies being forced to shrink down and enter Chuckie's body to retrieve a watermelon seed, [47] [48] The Angry Beavers episode, "Vantastic Voyage", where the scientists go inside Dag's body, the Fairly OddParents episode " Tiny Timmy! ", which has Timmy being shrunk down by Cosmo and Wanda to enter Vicky's body in order to study for school, and The Adventures of Jimmy Neutron: Boy Genius episode, "Journey to the Center of Carl", where Jimmy and his friends go inside Carl's body, among others. [48]
• Children's educational TV series The Magic School Bus had a number of episodes involving the bus going inside a human: "For Lunch" and "Inside Ralphie" in the first season, "Flexes Its Muscles" in the second season, "Works Out" in the third season and "Goes Cellular" and "Makes a Stink" in the final season, dealing with the topics of Digestion, Germs, Body Mechanics, Circulation, Cells and Smelling respectively. [47] [48]
• The Iron Man animated TV series features the episode "Iron Man, On the Inside", in which Iron Man must go inside Hawkeye to save him. [49]
• Dexter's Laboratory episode " Fantastic Boyage " features Dexter attempting to inject himself into Dee Dee to find a cure for the common cold, inadvertently winding up inside his dog. [48]
• Futurama episode " Parasites Lost " involves the Planet Express crew sending microscopic copies of themselves inside Fry to save him from parasites. [47] [48]
• Family Guy episode " Emission Impossible " has Stewie shrinking down and going inside of Peter's testicles to prevent him and Lois from having another baby. [47] [48]
• Both Teen Titans and Teen Titans Go! feature episodes in which either Beast Boy or Robin enter Cyborg's body to cure him. [49]
• The Simpsons' fifteenth iteration of Treehouse of Horror sees in its third leg a trip into Mr. Burns's body to rescue Maggie after she gets shrunk down into a pill and ingested. [47] [48]
• Phineas and Ferb episode "Journey to the Center of Candace" features Phineas and Ferb building a shrinking submarine to enter Isabella's chihuahua, but accidentally ending up inside their sister Candace. [48]
• Batman: The Brave and the Bold episode "Journey to the Center of the Bat!" has Atom and Aquaman traveling through Batman's body to cure him. [48]
• Regular Show episode "Cool Cubed" features Mordecai and Rigby shrinking and traveling into Thomas's brain to stop it from freezing. [48]
• Rick and Morty episode " Anatomy Park " involves Rick shrinking Morty down to fit in a homeless man dressed as Santa Claus to assist with the amusement park he was trying to operate inside of him. [47] [48]
• Archer two-part season 6 finale "Drastic Voyage" directly spoofs the film. [49]
• List of American films of 1966
• List of films featuring miniature people
• Microsurgery

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• ↑ Fantastic Voyage at the American Film Institute Catalog
• ↑ Solomon, Aubrey. Twentieth Century Fox: A Corporate and Financial History (The Scarecrow Filmmakers Series) . Lanham, Maryland: Scarecrow Press, 1989. ISBN   978-0-8108-4244-1 . p. 254
• ↑ "Fantastic Voyage, Box Office Information" . The Numbers . Retrieved April 16, 2012 .
• ↑ Menville, Douglas Alver; R. Reginald (1977). Things to Come: An Illustrated History of the Science Fiction Film . Times Books. p.   133 . ISBN   0-8129-0710-8 .
• ↑ Fischer, Dennis (2000). Science Fiction Film Directors, 1895–1998 . McFarland. p.   192. ISBN   0-7864-0740-9 .
• ↑ Maltin, Leonard (2008). Leonard Maltin's Movie Guide (2009   ed.). Penguin Group. p.   438 . ISBN   978-0-452-28978-9 . Retrieved 2009-11-23 .
• ↑ "Full cast and crew for 'Fantastic Voyage' " . Internet Movie Database . Retrieved 2009-11-23 .
• ↑ Asimov, Isaac (1980). In Joy Still Felt: The Autobiography of Isaac Asimov, 1954–1978 . New York: Avon. p.   363 . ISBN   0-380-53025-2 .
• ↑ Asimov, Isaac (1966). Fantastic Voyage . Random House Publishing. ISBN   978-0553275728 .
• ↑ Scheuer, P. K. (Aug 12, 1964). "Humor is cruel in sicilian satire". Los Angeles Times . ProQuest   154970048 .
• 1 2 Scheuer, P. K. (Mar 14, 1965). "Submarines in blood stream!". Los Angeles Times . ProQuest   155145991 .
• 1 2 PETER BART (Feb 16, 1965). "FILM MAKES VISIT TO THE INNER MAN". New York Times . ProQuest   116753069 .
• ↑ Abbott, L.B. "Special Effects: Wire, Tape and Rubber Band Style". A S C Holding Corp; First Edition (December 1, 1984) ISBN 0935578064 . {{ cite web }} : Missing or empty | url= ( help )
• ↑ Hopper, H. (Sep 12, 1965). "Call me RAQUEL". Chicago Tribune . ProQuest   180091842 .
• ↑ Zeitlin, D. I. (Sep 25, 1966). "A SPECTACULAR TRIP THROUGH INNER MAN". Los Angeles Times . ProQuest   155554064 .
• ↑ Brodesco, Alberto (2011). "I've Got you under my Skin: Narratives of the Inner Body in Cinema and Television" . Nuncius: Journal of the Material and Visual History of Science . 26 (1): 201–21. doi : 10.1163/182539111x569829 . PMID   21936210 . Retrieved 19 July 2012 .
• 1 2 Asimov 1980:363
• ↑ Bond, Jeff (1998). Fantastic Voyage (CD insert notes). Leonard Rosenman. Los Angeles, California: Film Score Monthly . p.   2. Vol. 1, No. 3.
• ↑ "Fantastic Voyage Review" . Variety . December 31, 1965 . Retrieved 2010-08-01 . (extract)
• ↑ Crowther, Bosley (September 8, 1966). "Screen: 'Fantastic Voyage' Is All That". The New York Times . Viewed 2010-09-09. ( registration required )
• ↑ Schickel, Richard (September 23, 1966). "A Wild Trip in a Blood Vessel" . Movie Review . Life Magazine . p.   16 . Retrieved 2010-09-09 . (archive)
• ↑ "Fantastic Voyage Movie Reviews" . Rotten Tomatoes . Retrieved 2023-07-29 .
• ↑ Silverman, Stephen M (1988). The Fox that got away   : the last days of the Zanuck dynasty at Twentieth Century-Fox . L. Stuart. p.   325 . ISBN   9780818404856 .
• ↑ "The New York Times: Fantastic Voyage – Awards" . Movies & TV Dept. The New York Times . 2012. Archived from the original on 2012-10-20 . Retrieved 2008-12-27 .
• ↑ Asimov 1980:366–370
• ↑ Asimov 1980:363–364
• ↑ Asimov, Isaac (11 August 2008). Fantastic Voyage . Baker & Taylor, CATS. ISBN   978-1439526484 .
• ↑ Asimov 1980:371, 391
• ↑ Asimov 1980:390
• ↑ Asimov 1980:388–389
• ↑ Asimov 1980:407
• ↑ "Critique, Impulse , September 1966, p. 159.
• ↑ Perlmutter, David (2018). The Encyclopedia of American Animated Television Shows . Rowman & Littlefield. pp.   197–198. ISBN   978-1538103739 .
• ↑ Wells, John (2014). American Comic Book Chronicles: 1965-1969 . TwoMorrows Publishing. p.   235. ISBN   978-1605490557 .
• ↑ "Gold Key: Fantastic Voyage " . Grand Comics Database .
• ↑ Gold Key: Fantastic Voyage at the Comic Book DB (archived from the original )
• ↑ MAD Cover Site , MAD #110 April 1967.
• ↑ Electronic Fun with Computers & Games issue #6
• 1 2 3 4 5 Asimov, Isaac (1994). I, Asimov . Bantam Books. p.   501. ISBN   0-553-56997-X .
• 1 2 Sciretta, Peter (September 26, 2007). "Roland Emmerich Tries To Explain Why James Cameron's Fantastic Voyage Script Sucked" . /Film . Archived from the original on August 25, 2009 . Retrieved 2009-11-24 .
• 1 2 "Exclusive: Emmerich On Fantastic Voyage" . empireonline.com . Bauer Consumer Media. September 25, 2007 . Retrieved 2009-11-24 .
• ↑ Fleming, Michael (August 15, 2007). "Emmerich to Captain 'Voyage' " . variety.com . Reed Business Information . Retrieved 2007-08-15 .
• ↑ Leins, Jeff (April 4, 2010). "Paul Greengrass Eyes 'Fantastic Voyage' in 3D" . News in Film . Archived from the original on 2010-04-06 . Retrieved 2010-04-04 .
• ↑ Kit, Borys (January 7, 2016). "Guillermo del Toro in Talks to Direct 'Fantastic Voyage' Remake (Exclusive)" . The Hollywood Reporter .
• ↑ Fleming, Mike Jr. (August 25, 2017). "Guillermo Del Toro's 'Fantastic Voyage' Pauses Until After Awards Season" . Deadline . Retrieved August 26, 2017 .
• ↑ Sinnott, John (20 September 2008). "Doctor Who: The Invisible Enemy/K9 and Company: A Girl's Best Friend" . DVD Talk . Retrieved 19 October 2013 .
• 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 Mitchell, Anthea (19 June 2015). "10 Movies and Shows That Explore the Human Body" . Showbiz Cheat Sheet.
• 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 Hollywood.com Staff (2 May 2014). "The Best Cartoon Parodies of 'Fantastic Voyage' " . Hollywood.com .
• 1 2 3 Whitbrook, James (7 September 2017). "The 11 Best Fantastic Voyage Parodies on TV" . Gizmodo .
• Fantastic Voyage at the American Film Institute Catalog
• Fantastic Voyage at the TCM Movie Database
• Fantastic Voyage at AllMovie
• Fantastic Voyage title listing at the Internet Speculative Fiction Database
• Fantastic Voyage at Open Library
• David Starr, Space Ranger
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Marvel casts Julia Garner as The Fantastic Four's Silver Surfer

A fter revealing the cast of The Fantastic Four in February, Marvel Studios has reportedly found one of the team's foils as well. On Wednesday, Deadline reported that Julia Garner will play the Silver Surfer in the forthcoming comic book movie.

More specifically, Garner – who rose to fame as Ruth Langmore in Netflix's crime drama series Ozark – will play Shalla-Bal, Empress of Zenn-La and the lover of Norrin Radd, who is the Silver Surfer in the comics. Eventually, she obtains the Power Cosmic as well, granting her the same abilities as Radd as she joins him as a Herald of Galactus.

It's not clear how Marvel Studios plans to square all of this in the movie, but I'd hazard a guess that they'll simply swap the roles, making Shalla-Bal the primary Silver Surfer.

Garner joins Pedro Pascal as Mister Fantastic, Vanessa Kirby as Invisible Woman, Ebon Moss-Bachrach as the Thing, and Joseph Quinn as the Human Torch. Jeff Kaplan and Ian Springer wrote the script, and Matt Shakman ( WandaVision ) will direct.

The Fantastic Four is set to begin shooting this summer, with the release date set for July 25, 2025. It will be the first entry of Phase Six in the MCU, setting up the grand finale of Avengers 5 (previously The Kang Dynasty ) and Avengers: Secret Wars .

The post Marvel casts Julia Garner as The Fantastic Four's Silver Surfer appeared first on BGR .

Den of Geek

Why Hasn’t Fantastic Voyage Been Remade Yet?

As we mourn the passing of ‘60s icon Raquel Welch, we ponder why her breakthrough sci-fi classic, Fantastic Voyage, has not received a full-on upgrade.

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When 1960s and ‘70s icon Raquel Welch died last week at the age of 82 , much of the media focus was on her (well-deserved) status as one of the most memorable and gorgeous sex symbols in movie history. A lot of the coverage, in fact, noted that the Chicago native’s substantial talents as an actress, singer, and dancer (she appeared in 30 films, numerous TV series, and hosted a handful of her own variety specials), were overshadowed by her status as one of the era’s premiere pinups.

While she may be best remembered for her turn as a skimpily-clad cavewoman in 1966’s One Million Years B.C. , her breakout role came earlier that year in the 20th Century Fox sci-fi spectacle Fantastic Voyage . The film was Welch’s fourth, but the first in which she had a lead role. She played Cora Peterson, one of five members of a medical team who are miniaturized, along with a small submarine, and injected into the body of a defecting Soviet scientist in order to remove a clot from his brain and save his life.

With only 60 minutes in which to work, since that is when the miniaturization process will subside and they’ll revert to full size, the team makes its way via the patient’s bloodstream through various marquee organs—the heart, the lungs, the ear—each with their own dangers and challenges. Meanwhile the crew’s security officer (Stephen Boyd) begins to suspect that someone on board is a saboteur, installed on the mission by the enemy government to kill him from the inside.

Welch doesn’t have a lot of dialogue in the movie, but for the era, she’s no wallflower either. Her character is a capable technician charged with assisting the surgeon who’s going to perform the procedure. Welch and the rest of the cast, which also includes reliable character actors like Boyd ( Ben-Hur ), Donald Pleasance ( Halloween ), and Edmond O’Brian ( Seven Days in May ), all acquit themselves reasonably well considering that they spend most of the movie either on wires or in the cramped submarine set.

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Like many movies of its time, Fantastic Voyage is best remembered for its audacious (if scientifically ludicrous) premise and its technical presentation of the inner workings of the human body, which were recreated through the use of large sets , animation, and rear projection. The 57-year-old movie looks shakier today in visual terms—although one has to wonder how far we’ve really come from matte images to, say, the Volume—but watching it begs the question: Why hasn’t this been remade?

A Sci-Fi Spectacle of Its Time

Directed by Richard Fleischer, whose other sci-fi outings included the Disney submarine classic 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea (1954) and the seminal Charlton Heston overpopulation thriller Soylent Green (1973), Fantastic Voyage was conceived by writers Otto Clement and Jerome Bixby (the latter wrote the classic “It’s a Good Life” episode of The Twilight Zone and penned two of the original Star Trek ’s most famous segments , “Mirror, Mirror” and “Day of the Dove”).

The story was adapted by David Duncan ( The Time Machine ) and the final screenplay penned by Harry Kleiner (yes, they had multiple writers on films back then too!), with science fiction titan Isaac Asimov approached to write the novelization. Because Asimov penned the book at a fairly rapid pace, leading it to come out ahead of the movie due to the latter’s production delays, it was a common misconception for years that Asimov himself came up with the premise and story.

Many of the internal organs that the submarine (dubbed the Proteus) travels through were created as full-sized sets, in which a five-foot model of the craft would sail. A full-sized set of the Proteus interior was also built, along with other versions of various sizes. Fox had announced prior to production that Fantastic Voyage would be the most expensive sci-fi film made to date, and with a final budget of $6 million (about $56 million when adjusted for inflation), the picture certainly lived up to that billing.

Critical reception at the time was mostly kind, and Fantastic Voyage won Oscars for Best Special Effects and Best Art Direction . Looking at it now, it moves more slowly than modern VFX-driven blockbusters (as do most films made before, say, the mid-1990s), and as mentioned the effects have not aged all that well. But there is absolutely a sense of wonder and even awe still present in the film, the imagery is colorful, imaginative, and psychedelic, and its ticking-clock narrative still builds in suspense and tension.

With Hollywood always on the lookout for another IP to remake or reinvigorate, it stands to reason that Fantastic Voyage would be ripe for rediscovery. The basic story remains sound, from a genre point of view, and the capabilities of modern VFX houses would no doubt be able to bring the interior of the human body to life in ways that the makers of the 1966 movie could have only dreamed about.

So what’s the holdup? The truth is that Fantastic Voyage has been on the remake “to-do” list for years, but even some heavyweight genre filmmakers have been unable to get it to the starting gate, never mind across the finish line.

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Decades of Development Hell

Although there was a short-lived Saturday morning animated kids’ series that ran in 1968 on ABC, it wasn’t until 1984 that development of a new Fantastic Voyage movie , at the time as a sequel, began in earnest. Isaac Asimov was asked in 1984 to pen a sequel novel that could be then turned into a movie. His book, titled Fantastic Voyage II: Destination Brain , came out in 1987 and featured an entirely different story and characters, but the movie itself was never made.

The IP went dormant for more than a decade after that, until no less an auteur than James Cameron expressed an interest in remaking the original film. With his experience in working with water and sets both massive and cramped, as well as his ongoing exploration of the bleeding edge in visual effects, it’s enticing to imagine what Cameron could have done with this material.

Cameron did get as far as writing a screenplay, but after completing Titanic , his mind began to turn toward the development and creation of Avatar . He decided not to direct Fantastic Voyage , although he was willing to produce a film based on his script.

Next up was Roland Emmerich , the king of Z-movies disguised as blockbusters, who actually began pre-production on the movie in 2007. But Emmerich also rejected Cameron’s screenplay and commissioned a new one. We’ve had our issues with Cameron as a writer for sure, but this is still the guy who wrote Aliens and The Terminator , and the idea of the fellow who directed The Day After Tomorrow and Independence Day: Resurgence rejecting Cameron’s script makes us both laugh and cry.

The new script got bogged down thanks to a Writers Guild strike, and Emmerich exited the project to make sure that 2012 could meet its title release year. Paul Greengrass ( The Bourne Ultimatum ) and Shawn Levy ( Free Guy ) both spent some time after that on Fantastic Voyage ’s increasingly not-so-fantastic development process, and both eventually dropped out with no results either.

Enter Guillermo del Toro . Everyone’s favorite genre filmmaker was announced to be in talks about the movie in 2016 , with David S. Goyer ( Batman Begins ) coming aboard to pen a new version of the script in collaboration with neuroscientist Justin Rhodes. While Greengrass and Levy were not especially exciting prospects, del Toro was easily the most intriguing since Cameron’s tenure on the film. While the latter would probably have brought a great deal of scientific rigor to a new Fantastic Voyage , we could easily see Del Toro turning the inside of the brain into a Gothic memory palace while making microbes and white blood cells into nightmarish Lovecraftian monsters. Alas, del Toro reportedly put the project on hold in mid-2017 to focus on completing The Shape of Water , intending to return to it in the spring of 2018.

That date came and went, and in the intervening five years, del Toro has developed, written, and directed both Nightmare Alley and his stop-motion adaptation of Pinocchio , released late last year. His next two projects are another stop-motion film , The Buried Giant , and an unnamed live-action effort, but is there any chance it could be Fantastic Voyage ?

It seems unlikely at this point. Following Disney’s purchase of 20th Century Fox in 2019, the fate of many projects in the Fox pipeline became murky or lost in development limbo, if not canceled outright. As far as we can ascertain, no one’s ever said a word about any of the scripts that were commissioned for the film, with the exception of David Goyer, who told The Scriptlab in 2015 that he and Justin Rhodes were striving to make it as “realistic” as possible.

Whether the remake ever gets made or not, Fantastic Voyage is still a landmark in the subgenre of movies about shrinking people, which stretches from 1936’s The Devil-Doll to the 1957 masterpiece The Incredible Shrinking Man , to comedies like 1989’s Honey, I Shrunk the Kids and 2015’s Ant-Man . Its influence on the latter is considerable, and aside from 1987’s Innerspace (which owes an enormous amount to Fantastic Voyage ) it remains the only live-action sci-fi movie to travel inside the human body.

But one thing that all those movies, and any potential remake, doesn’t have is the luminous presence of Raquel Welch, perhaps Fantastic Voyage ’s greatest visual effect.

Don Kaye | @donkaye

Don Kaye is an entertainment journalist by trade and geek by natural design. Born in New York City, currently ensconced in Los Angeles, his earliest childhood memory is…

Hacks Season 3 Adds J. Smith-Cameron to Cast

By Anthony Nash

The cast of Hacks is expanding for Season 3, with Variety reporting that J. Smith-Cameron will join the upcoming third season in a recurring role.

Smith-Cameron’s character is currently unknown, but Variety notes that she will have a recurring guest star role, so expect her to show up in multiple episodes.

The actress is best known for her role on the hit HBO series Succession, where she played Gerri Kellman, a role that earned her two nominations at the Primetime Emmy Awards. She has also starred in a variety of other high-profile projects, including Rectify, True Blood, Divorce, and more.

The next installment of Hacks is scheduled to make its debut on May 2 with the first two episodes. It will then be followed by two new episodes each week, concluding with the season finale on May 30.

“A year after parting, Deborah Vance is riding high off the success of her standup special while Ava pursues new opportunities back in Los Angeles,” reads the logline.

Who’s in the cast of Hacks Season 3?

Hacks Season 3 also stars Paul W. Downs, Megan Stalter, Carl Clemons-Hopkins, Kaitlin Olson, Christopher McDonald, Mark Indelicato, Rose Abdoo, and Lorenza Izzo. The guest-star line-up for the next installment includes Helen Hunt, Christina Hendricks, Christopher Lloyd, Dan Bucatinsky, George Wallace and Tony Goldwyn.

The series is created and executive produced by Paul W. Downs, Lucia Aniello, and Jen Statsky, who are also serving as showrunners. It is executive produced by Michael Schur, David Miner and Morgan Sackett.

The first two seasons of Hacks are available for streaming on Max.

Anthony Nash has been writing about games and the gaming industry for nearly a decade. When he’s not writing about games, he’s usually playing them. You can find him on Twitter talking about games or sports at @_anthonynash.

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