Fantastic Four director says there are ‘no other superheroes’ in the universe of his movie

By Joe Allen Published April 6, 2025

As Marvel ramps up toward Avengers: Doomsday, one of the big new additions to that cast will be the Fantastic Four. We’ve gotten our first glimpse at the heroes, who occupy their own retro-futuristic universe.

Now, director Matt Shakman is providing some more details on that universe, and just how far removed it is from the rest of the MCU.

“We are our own universe,” he explained in an interview with Empire. “Which is wonderful and liberating. There’s really no [other] superheroes. There’s no Easter eggs. There’s no running into Iron Man or whatever. They’re it, in this universe. I love the interconnected Marvel Universe, but we get to do something so new and so different. Eventually this world will meet up with other worlds — but for now this is our own little corner.”

The film, which stars Pedro Pascal, Vanessa Kirby, Joseph Quinn and Ebon-Moss Bacharach as the four titular characters, is set in a 1960s-inspired version of Earth, and now, we know that that version of Earth is one without any other heroes. Marvel head Kevin Feige has also said that the movie will not be an origin story, which means we’ll be catching up with these heroes midstream.

Obviously, the world of the Fantastic Four will eventually collide with the rest of the MCU, and given that Doctor Doom is the villain in Doomsday, it seems like the Fantastic Four will be pretty central to whatever that movie is ultimately about. For now, though, they’re off in their own little world, which means that this movie won’t need to burden itself with too many references to the rest of the MCU.

The Fantastic Four: First Steps is set to hit theaters on July 25, 2025.