Marvel’s upcoming The Fantastic Four: First Steps Blu-ray will feature five deleted scenes, with at least one seemingly centered on Mole Man.
The movie’s physical editions for 4K Ultra HD, Blu-ray and DVD will arrive October 14, Entertainment Weekly has reported, following a digital release next week on September 23. Boxed copies will also contain other special features, such as three featurettes, a gag reel and an audio commentary featuring director Matt Shakman and production designer Kasra Farahani.
The Fantastic Four: First Steps’ selection of deleted scenes will likely be of most interest to fans, however, following sizable cuts by Marvel to the movie’s runtime shortly before launch — including the complete removal of John Malkovich’s character Red Ghost.
Paul Walter Hauser’s Mole Man and Natasha Lyone’s character Rachel Rozman remained in the film, meanwhile, though both ended up feeling underutilised its final cut. Indeed, Mole Man’s friendship with Sue Storm felt particularly unexplained — something actress Vanessa Kirby has said was established in a deleted scene that theater-going audiences never got to see.
Included in The Fantastic Four: First Steps’ physical release will be:
- Thanksgiving Soup Kitchen
- Fantastic Four Day
- Subterranea
- Birthday Sweater
- Taking Turns
“Subterranea” almost certainly features more of Mole Man — and is potentially the scene featuring Hauser and Kirby. “Thanksgiving Soup Kitchen,” meanwhile, sounds like a scene featuring Ebon Moss-Bachrach’s The Thing, with potentially more from Lyone’s character.
Discussing why so much was cut from the film, director Matt Shakman previously claimed that Marvel “intentionally wrote and shot a lot more than we ended up using, or needing to use”. Some of this cut material, including the subplot featuring Malkovich’s character, would have acted as a backstory showing how The Fantastic Four became established as superheroes. But other scenes were removed from later on in the movie’s runtime, too.
“How long can we spend getting to know and love these characters in their environment? How much is too much? You never know until you start to put it together and feel it out for yourself,” Shakman said. “There was a ton of stuff we shot that was really wonderful that we didn’t use, couldn’t use.”
Shakman has also previously said that Malkovich’s scenes will never be released publicly, as they were incomplete and required extensive CGI work. Still, here’s hoping the five other moments listed above help provide Marvel fans a slightly more complete picture of how The Fantastic Four’s first steps into the MCU might originally have looked.
Tom Phillips is IGN’s News Editor. You can reach Tom at [email protected] or find him on Bluesky @tomphillipseg.bsky.social
