Doctor Doom may be the greatest Marvel supervillain – depending on who you ask – but he’s never really made the transition to the big screen. Julian McMahon looked like he was trying his best Tim Story’s Fantastic Four and Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer, but he never captured Doctor Doom’s gravitas (the awful movies didn’t help much either). Those of us who saw Roger Corman’s never-released but frequently bootlegged 1994 Fantastic Four know that Joseph Culp actually did a slightly better job than McMahon, but he was stuck in a movie with the budget smaller than a typical 7/11 shopping list.
So if nothing else, Toby Kebbell will at least have the freedom to make Doctor Doom his own in Josh Trank’s The Fantastic Four, the first film in a newly rebooted franchise due in theaters in 2015. Who is Toby Kebbell? Good question. He’s been making the most of supporting roles in high profile but swiftly forgotten films like War Horse, The Sorcerer’s Apprentice and Wrath of the Titans for years, but he’s finally getting his shot at the big time in this summer’s Dawn of the Planet of the Apes. Toby Kebbell will also play a part in Duncan Jones’s upcoming movie adaptation of the MMORPG World of Warcraft, entitled simply Warcraft, which we hope will fare better than Kebbell’s first video game movie, Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time.
Variety reports that Toby Kebbell earned the role of Doctor Doom over actors like Jack Huston (American Hustle) and Domhnall Gleeson (About Time), two actors who – like Kebbel – fit The Fantastic Four‘s theme of casting younger actors as the superhero team and now its greatest enemy.
Miles Teller (The Spectacular Now) will play Reed Richards, aka “Mr. Fantastic,” Kate Mara (Transcendence) will play Sue Storm, aka “The Invisible Woman,” Michael B. Jordan (Fruitvale Station) will play Johnny Storm, aka “The Human Torch,” and Jamie Bell (The Adventures of Tintin) will play Ben Grimm, aka “The Human Torch. At the age of 31, Toby Kebbell is the oldest member of the Fantastic Four cast announced so far, although he’s only a few months older than Kate Mara.
We wish Toby Kebbell, and ourselves, a lot of luck with The Fantastic Four. All of us want this movie to be the best Fantastic Four movie to date with the best Doctor Doom in live-action movie history… not that that would be very hard to pull off.
William Bibbiani is the editor of CraveOnline’s Film Channel and co-host of The B-Movies Podcast. Follow him on Twitter at @WilliamBibbiani.
