Marvel Cinematic Universe fans are already getting excited about the prospect of Doctor Doom making his inevitable debut, but there’s an argument to be made that keeping the iconic villain away from the in-development Fantastic Four reboot may be the best course of action.
After all, we’ve already had four movies featuring the titular team boasting three different lineups, and every single one of them has featured the Latverian dictator. Joseph Culp, Julian McMahon, and Toby Kebbell have all inhabited the role, but none of them exactly managed to make much of an impression.
However, Fant4stic writer Jeremy Slater has revealed in an interview with ComicBook that his original draft in the screenplay featured two major comic book antagonists, before he wound up returning to the well of Doom instead.
“We had Annihilus in my draft of the original Fantastic Four when they went to the Negative Zone for the first time they were attacked. In the very first draft, they were attacked by Galactus and the whole plot, it was Galactus had fired his sort of cosmic radiation through the portal and then you found out Galactus was sort of tracking that radiation back and was on his way to Earth.
In the second draft, they actually encountered Annihilus and he was 20-feet tall and cybernetic. I pitched him as the T-Rex from Jurassic Park and the way he would be sort of hunting and attacking them, and it seemed like he was the one who killed Victor and they barely got back through the portal in time but it felt like a really fun twist or fun way to use Annihilus that we hadn’t seen before.
For one of a thousand reasons, that was something that got changed in that movie. But the good news is he hasn’t been used yet. He’s still out there, and he’s awesome. So out there I have no doubt Annihilus is showing up at some point, it’s just a question of is he Fantastic Four or is he part of the different cosmic universe MCU stuff? I don’t know.”
Annihilus and Galactus have both been heavily rumored for the MCU, so as Slater says, it’s a case of when and not if in all likelihood, regardless of whether or not Doom heads up the evil side of the franchise’s Fantastic Four.