Marvel Studios' Fantastic Four director confirmed as Matt Shakman from WandaVision
Shenkman had left his gig as Star Trek 4 director for the new position
It’s official: Marvel’s First Family has a new director – but that means trouble on the Final Frontier, as WandaVision’s Matt Shakman has dropped out of Paramount’s upcoming Star Trek movie due to his new gig as the man bringing the Fantastic Four to the MCU.
As originally reported by the Hollywood Reporter, Shakman – who directed all of Marvel’s first Disney+ project, and has previously helmed episodes of Hulu’s The Great and FX’s It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia – will helm the 2024 Fantastic Four movie that will launch the studio’s Phase 6 era. Confirmation came from Marvel Studios president himself, Kevin Feige, during the Marvel presentation at D23 Expo 2022 on Saturday morning.
The project had been announced in December 2020 with Spider-Man director Jon Watts attached, but he dropped out earlier this year to work on Skeleton Crew, a new Star Wars series for Disney+.
Fantastic Four will mark Shakman’s first movie work in a decade – he’d previously directed the thriller Cut Bank in 2014 – but that wasn’t initially going to be the case; last year, he was announced as the director of the next Star Trek movie from a screenplay by Lindsey Beer and Geneva Robertson-Dworet, with J.J. Abrams producing. Since news of the Fantastic Four gig broke, he has officially bowed out of that project, with studio Paramount Pictures releasing a statement that reads, “Matt Shakman is an incredibly talented filmmaker, and we regret the timing didn’t align for him to direct our upcoming Star Trek film,. We are grateful for his many contributions, are excited about the creative vision of this next chapter and look forward to bringing it to audiences all around the world.”
It’s unknown at this point who is in the running to replace him on Star Trek, and whether or not it will delay the feature. The project is intended to reunite the 'Kelvin Timeline' crew of the 2009 reboot of the franchise for the first time since 2016’s Star Trek Beyond.
Catch up on this and all the big news, reports, interviews, and galleries of the weekend with Popverse's D23 Expo 2022 coverage round-up.