Marvel’s ‘Fantastic Four’ delay establishes an interesting pattern for the superhero team’s big-screen adaptations

As quickly as we got all those juicy titles and release details for the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s phase five and six projects, a number of them got delayed. This includes the long-awaited and hopefully finally watchable Fantastic Four reboot.

As irritating as that is, Marvel fans have observed a strange pattern regarding the struggling big-screen adaptations of the superhero team. 

Fantastic Four’s original 2024 release date provided the opportunity for a marketing slam dunk by coloring the number ‘4’ on the movie poster distinctly differently, in the same way that Fast X’s tagline should be ‘Fast-ten your seatbelts’ or bust. 

Regardless, here we are – and the film will now be coming out in 2025 ten years after Josh Trank’s attempt, which was ten years after Tim Story’s take. Even Reed Richards and Sue Storm’s psychic offspring Franklin could have predicted that there’d be a ten-year gap between each theatrical release of a Fantastic Four flick, but you’d better believe it because it’s real. 

Some other big-name Marvel movies that were pushed back, albeit in not-so-round increments, were Deadpool 3, just over a week after that bombshell Hugh Jackman news, Avengers: Secret Wars, and Blade, which has been delayed indefinitely while Marvel hunts for the project’s new director.

In the meantime, the next Marvel film to look forward to is Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, hitting cinema screens on Nov. 11 2022.