Exclusive: Harrison Ford In Talks For Fantastic Four Role
According to our trusted and proven sources, Marvel Studios wants Harrison Ford for the upcoming, mysterious Fantastic Four movie.
Update: Harrison Ford was definitely in talks with Marvel, but it turned out to be for the role of Thunderbolt Ross in Captain America: Brave New World.
Harrison Ford is an icon of science fiction, having starred in Blade Runner, Star Wars, and a little movie called Cowboys & Aliens. In recent years, the actor seems to have been willing to return to some of his more notable roles, despite his legendary grumpiness (not to mention his apparent general distaste for Han Solo). At eighty years old, Harrison Ford is still going strong and according to our trusted and proven sources, is up for entering yet another huge franchise. Harrison Ford is being courted for a role in the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s upcoming Fantastic Four movie, and we have a good guess as to who he could be playing: Franklin Storm.
Harrison Ford long ago started playing dads in film; there is something about the actor that just reads as paternal if a bit cantankerous. He has ranged from playing a heroic father figure like intelligence officer/badass Jack Ryan in several Tom Clancy adaptations to a pretty bad father figure in Regarding Henry and The Mosquito Coast to an absentee father in both Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull and Blade Runner 2049. This time around, we are making the educated guess that Harrison Ford will be playing science dad Franklin Storm, the father of both Fantastic Four members Sue and Johnny Storm, eventual father-in-law of Reed Richards, and probably on nodding terms with Ben Grimm.
The depiction of Franklin Storm in Marvel Comics has varied over the decades. In the earliest comics show Franklin Storm as a surgeon who falls into a gambling addiction after the accidental death of his wife, and later goes to prison for manslaughter. Because Marvel Comics are what they are, eventually he was replaced by a Skrull imposter then had a big laser cannon strapped to his chest by aliens as a boobytrap for the Fantastic Four and died. Comics can be pretty weird sometimes.
However, we think it is far more likely that Harrison Ford will portray Franklin Storm in his more modern incarnation, which is as the director of the Baxter Foundation. Beginning with Ultimate Fantastic Four in 2004, Franklin Storm began to be depicted as a scientist in charge of a scientific organization dedicated to discovering and training child prodigies. That included his own children, as well as Reed Richards. Harrison Ford already played a very similar role in the 2013 adaptation of Ender’s Game, so he will slip into the part pretty easily.
It has already been previously confirmed that the Marvel Cinematic Universe Fantastic Four film will definitely not be an origin story, unlike the previous attempts to get Marvel’s First Family on screen. Harrison Ford playing Franklin Storm could potentially help the Fantastic Four to get some backstory without it being a full-on origin, plus give them the older mentor figure that Marvel Studios loves so much. Things tend not to go so well for Franklin Storm in Marvel Comics, so it is entirely possible we won’t see Harrison Ford for long. We’ll have to appreciate him while we can.
