Marvel's Fantastic Four Reboot Gets A Working Title - Here's What It Could Mean
After Fox's two aborted attempts at launching a movie franchise with America's first superhero family, Marvel Studios is set to launch its own version of "Fantastic Four." Excitingly, the film's pre-production process has advanced enough for a working title to be appended to that upcoming release — it has been temporarily titled "Fantastic Four: Blue Moon," according to The Cosmic Circus.
Of course, working titles are often just temporary weigh stations on the way to final products — they sometimes serve simply as code names known within the studio to keep plot details from leaking out into the press. But if this working title becomes the actual subtitle for this fresh take on "Fantastic Four," what could it possibly mean for the film itself? Does it hint at a plotline, or is it just a smokescreen obscuring the story's true nature?
Well, the story of the Fantastic Four definitely gets its start in outer space — the team gets its superpowers when they're bathed in cosmic rays during an off-the-books space shuttle test flight helmed by Reed Richards. But the words "Blue Moon" might have an even more vital connection to the ongoing Marvel Cinematic Universe, tying it in to the larger world and the biggest set of foes this world at large has ever faced down.
Might Fantastic Four's title have to do with the Skrull and Kree war?
The fifth and sixth phases of the Marvel Cinematic Universe have been and are slated to continue to be all about the Kree and Skrulls. Those menacing alien creatures who have the ability to shapeshift into any creature or human being are a major plot point during "Secret Invasion," and they seem to be a continuing throughline in "The Marvels," among other Phase 5 and 6 productions. In the comics world, where do the Kree first establish a colony to prove their ability to colonize other planets and their superiority over the Skrulls in a contest established by the Cotati? The blue area of the moon.
It's not a situation that ends well for the Kree; the Skrulls are picked as the superior alien race by the Cotati, and the Kree respond by rebelling against the decision. They abandon their settlement, and over the years, it rots in stasis on the moon. It's later found by the Fantastic Four during further space exploration in Issue 13 of "Fantastic Four." The storyline introduces Uatu the Watcher.
Is it possible that this storyline, or some version of it, might show up in the reboot movie? Since "Fantastic Four" is slated to ramp up the Marvel slate leading into the release of "Avengers: Secret Wars" — which, in comic-book-storyline terms, deals in part with a titanic physical contest between all the major Marvel Comics characters — it's possible. Since "Fantastic Four: Blue Moon" won't hit movie screens until the early summer of 2025, fans will have quite a lot of time to speculate as to its true meaning — if "Blue Moon" manages to remain appended to the movie's title, that is.