Julia Garner Boards MCU’s ‘Fantastic Four’ as the Silver Surfer

Julia Garner is shifting from the Ozarks to outer area. The Emmy and Golden Globe winner will make her blockbuster debut within the MCU because the Silver Surfer in Matt Shakman’s The Unbelievable 4, per a report yesterday night.

Garner, who made a quietly devastating affect in her breakthrough function on The Individuals earlier than handing over a barn-burning efficiency on Ozark, was as soon as earmarked to play the titular Materials Woman in a (now-shelved) Madonna biopic for Common. She joins a solid of equally exceptional rising stars—the beforehand introduced quartet of Pedro Pascal as Reed Richards, Vanessa Kirby as Sue Storm, Ebon Moss-Bachrach as Ben Grimm, and Joseph Quinn as Johnny Storm—in what seems to be a interval piece set within the early Sixties. Critically, she’ll play the Shalla-Bal model of the character, a twist that is set off just a few completely different alarm bells for comedian e-book followers as to the course of the movie.

Shalla-Bal was launched in Marvel’s Silver Surfer comics in 1968; she was the Empress of the utopian planet Zenn-La and the romantic associate of the unique Silver Surfer, Norrin Radd. Their lives had been interrupted upon the arrival of Galactus, a large cosmic entity that eats total planets to outlive. To spare Shalla-Bal and the remainder of the denizens of Zenn-La, Norrin presents to grow to be the chrome-clad Silver Surfer, aka the Herald of Galactus, and journey the universe on the pace of sunshine on a surfbort-like system to find out which planets are value consuming, form of like a cosmic Yelp reviewer.

You might keep in mind poor Norrin from 2007’s Unbelievable 4: Rise of the Silver Surfer, the place he was bodily embodied by prosthetic wunderkind Doug Jones and voiced by Laurence Fishburne. Lengthy earlier than that, his quasi-psychedelic area adventures made him each hippie’s favourite Marvel character, and he is been a pop icon ever since. In a scene added to the screenplay of Tony Scott’s 1995 movie Crimson Tide by uncredited script physician Quentin Tarantino, Denzel Washington chides a subordinate for getting right into a squabble about whether or not the French artist Moebius’ Surfer was higher than Kirby’s; Denzel then affirms that Kirby’s was superior.

The Shalla-Bal model of the Surfer, designed by legendary artist Alex Ross, first appeared within the alternate-reality Marvel story Earth X, written by Jim Krueger with artwork by John Paul Leon. The Shalla-Bal Surfer serves as a second herald for Galactus alongside Norrin, permitting the 2 lovers to be collectively—albeit nonetheless pressured to serve the World Eater.

The involvement of a Silver Surfer means that Shakman intends to actually play up the cosmic components of the Unbelievable 4’s backstory, probably by adapting the FF storyline referred to as the “Galactus Trilogy.” Revealed in March of 1966, only a few years after Shakman’s film is rumored to happen, the story is known to be the height of author Stan Lee and Jack Kirby’s fertile artistic relationship, a universally beloved FF arc bolstered by some classically otherworldly Kirby visuals. It additionally means we’re more likely to see a proper casting announcement for Galactus himself sooner slightly than later, fueling rumors that the function might be performed by both Antonio Banderas or Javier Bardem.

With the Surfer and Galactus in play, the probability of Physician Doom exhibiting up in a significant function decreases considerably, however that doesn’t imply he will not present up in a post-credits sequence or elsewhere. It could additionally imply that The Unbelievable 4 might happen in an alternate actuality, taking part in up the Multiversal shenanigans of this second MCU Saga. (Teaser artwork launched at present for 4-4 Day—get it?—exhibits Johnny Storm flying round a New York that doesn’t look a lot like the traditional MCU NYC.) A planet-eating drive exhibiting up on Earth’s doorstep within the ’60s feels one thing individuals within the present-day MCU would keep in mind, so setting the movie’s occasions in a special actuality could be a approach to keep away from complicating the established MCU timeline. We simply have one request: Can Garner bring along her Ozark accent for the role?