The Fantastic Four won’t be debuting on WandaVision, despite some clever fan theories linking Marvel’s first family to the popular Disney+ series. The Fantastic Four reasons to be one of Disney’s bigger priorities going forward, as they’re one of the few Marvel properties that haven’t yet debuted in the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
There have been some hints in WandaVision that the Fantastic Four could possibly be in play. After Monica Rambeau returned to the land of the living following the Blip in episode 4, “We Interrupt This Program,” SWORD Director Tyler Heyward explained to her that the space program had been gutted by Thanos’ snap, and that many astronauts had lost their nerve following the world-shattering event. The Fantastic Four were originally astronauts who gained their powers when they were exposed to cosmic microwave background radiation. CMBR actually got an explicit shoutout in the show, as the radiation was said to be emanating from Westview, the town where Wanda Maximoff and Vision are playing out a bizarre sitcom life.
But according to a ComicBook interview with series creator Jac Schaeffer, there are no plans to bring in the Fantastic Four to the series, and the mentions of CMBR and astronauts were coincidences. Schaeffer full quote can be read below:
“I have to tell you that thee CMBR, it was a coincidence. When I was putting my pitch together, I was trying to figure like, ‘What’s the science behind a broadcast? How does that even work?’ When I was in college, I had a friend who his thesis was building this machine that was about measuring CMBR. So, I’ve always been really fascinated by relic radiation and the idea of also how television signals in the air work. I’m gonna embarrass myself if I talk about it…I’ve never really understood how TV signals work. I did a little bit of research, we had this expert and she helped me. CMBR was my own original pitch, separate from anything else as my own fascination. The thing about how radio waves are out deep in the universe, they just went out there and they just keep going out there. All of that seems like really fertile ground for a show about two Avengers in a sitcom.”
The Fantastic Four have had a checkered past in live-action. Aside from a never-released Roger Corman version in 1994, the Fantastic Four properly debuted on the big screen in a non-MCU 2005 film that starred future Captain America Chris Evans as the Human Torch. The movie was a critical bomb, but made enough money to justify a sequel, 2007’s Fantastic Four: Rise Of The Silver Surfer, after which that iteration of the team fizzled out. Director Josh Trank tried a fairly extreme overhaul of the property with his 2015 Fantastic Four film, starring the likes of Michael B. Jordan and Miles Teller. That was a notoriously chaotic production, with Trank eventually losing control of the project and enduring multiple reshoots that resulted in a film that satisfied virtually no one.
Considering how much is happening in WandaVision, introducing a seminal aspect of the Marvel Universe like the Fantastic Four was likely too much for the series to take on. The rights to Fantastic Four are finally back in house with Marvel, giving fans hope that a film version worthy of Marvel’s first family might be right around the corner. Just don’t expect Reed Richards and friends to show up in Westview anytime soon.
Source: ComicBook
Originally from https://screenrant.com/wandavision-fantastic-four-mcu-theory-debunked/