Fantastic Four (2005) Trivia

Chris Columbus, Raja Gosnell and Peyton Reed were each attached as director at some point.

Steven Soderbergh and Sean Astin were both interested in directing.

George Clooney and Brendan Fraser were considered for the part of Reed Richards.

Paul Walker was considered for the part of Johnny Storm.

Ali Larter, Julia Stiles, Kate Bosworth, Rachel McAdams, Scarlett Johansson, Elizabeth Banks, KaDee Strickland were considered for the role of Susan Storm/Invisible Woman. When Peyton Reed was attached as the director, Renée Zellweger was considered for the Sue Storm/Invisible Woman role.

Tim Robbins was considered for Dr. Doom.

James Gandolfini was considered for the role of Ben Grimm/The Thing. David Boreanaz turned down to play Ben Grimm/The Thing.

The film has nearly 900 special effects shots.

A replica of a part of the Brooklyn Bridge was constructed on-set in Canada.

While Sue Storm is unpacking in the Baxter Building, in the background a signed photo of the band Devo can be seen.

Contains over 25 cameos from real life employees of Fox television affiliates.

To get through the long arduous make-up, Michael Chiklis spent the time in the make-up chair watching the Boston Red Sox, his favorite team, who happened to be breaking the "Curse of the Bambino" winning their first World Series since 1918.

Inspired by his role on "Nip/Tuck" (2003), it was Julian McMahon's idea to have Victor's scars sealed by surgical staples.

It was Ioan Gruffudd's idea that Reed should continually be taking notes: "On a good day, I'd be writing formulas that I remembered from my algebra class in school, and on a day when I was really concentrating on the other actor, it would just be gibberish."

As part of his costume for The Thing, Michael Chiklis wore prosthetic teeth. To prepare himself to speak with the prostheses, Chiklis wore them when reading to his children.

Cliff Curtis read for a role in the film.

Michael Chiklis, The Thing, is the only of the 4 to have read the comics.

It took three hours to get Michael Chiklis into The Thing suit.

Although Stan Lee has made cameos in many Marvel movies, this is the first time he has played a character from the comics: Willy Lumpkin, the Fantastic Four's kindly old mailman.

To keep Michael Chiklis cool in the Thing suit, a rock was removed from his head and cold air was sprayed into the gap between the suit and the actor

Several moments in the movie take their visual cues from Jack Kirby's work in the very first issue of Fantastic Four: The cosmic storm is depicted with the same bullet-shaped rays from the origin. Ben possesses the lumpy craggy face from his earlier appearance rather than his more familiar beetle-brow. Johnny races against a missile like he does in the opening act of the comic. Johnny's flame-form is a smoldering pillar of fire like it was in the earlier comics rather than the more familiar burning man look. Ben smashes into an oncoming truck in an angle identical to the one given in a panel where he exits a manhole directly in the path of an oncoming car.

The script was developed for over ten years. The final writer was Simon Kinberg, who worked on the movie throughout its production.

Michael Chiklis fought to have a "real" Thing rather than a computer-generated character.

Jessica Alba had a kidney infection during the filming and nearly fainted when she was with Julian McMahon in the space station scene.

Was shipped to theaters simply under the name "Bug".

At one point Susan Storm looks at an issue of People Magazine with her face on the cover. Also on the cover is James Marsden with the headline "James Marsden eyes next superhero role" and Rebecca Romijn with the headline "The Mystique of Rebecca Romijn". In the X-Men film series (based on another Marvel comics franchise), Marsden plays Cyclops, and Romijn plays Mystique.

Just after Victor throws his doctor into the X-Ray light, we see Reed writing on the board. The writing visible is the Acid-Dissociation Equilibrium (Ka) expression for nitrous acid (HNO2). It reads [H3O+][NO2-]/[HNO2]. It has absolutely no relevance to the plot or any of the other scientific ideas in the film.

The scene on the bridge took about 5 weeks to shoot.

A one-minute sequence showing Johnny Storm morphing into a ball of flames and soaring over Manhattan took 4 months to create. The background was an entirely digitized rendering of New York City.

Michael Chiklis was offered the role of Thing after Jennifer Garner suggested him for it.

Richard Ho, one of Wizard magazine's staff writers, appears as one of the reporters in front of the Baxter Building in a crowd sequence. Wizard is one of the most successful and popular magazines about the comics business.

This feature is included in the first wave of Blu-Ray releases by Fox. A total of five movies were included in this initial wave. The others were Ice Age (2002), Behind Enemy Lines (2001), The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen (2003) and Kiss of the Dragon (2001).

The name of the ship in the final shot means "tip of the toe" in Russian.

Not the first Fantastic Four movie. Another was made (The Fantastic Four (1994)) but never released because, unbeknown to the cast and crew, it was never intended to BE released; it was made only because the studio that owned the rights to make a Fantastic Four movie would have lost them if it did not begin production by a certain date.

According to the actors in the DVD commentary Stan Lee, who makes a cameo appearance as the mailman, was supposed only to say, "Welcome home, Dr. Richards." Instead, Lee says, "Welcome back to the Baxter Building, Doctor Richards!"

Michael Chiklis got to fulfill a childhood fantasy. He was an avid reader of the Fantastic Four, and his favorite comic book character was The Thing.

Victor makes a few references to the characters of Mr. Fantastic and The Thing before the storm scene happens. He firstly comments on Reed Richards 'stretching' for the stars during the meeting, then later jokes about Ben Grimm doing 'all the heavy lifting'.

Patrick Wilson auditioned for a role in this film.

This was the third superhero movie to be released in 2005, after Elektra (2005) and Batman Begins (2005).

The action sequence on the Brooklyn Bridge was shot using a 200ft set erected against a blue screen in a Vancouver parking lot and then later enhanced with CGI views of Manhattan.

Michael Chiklis wore 60 pounds of latex to play The Thing.

20th Century Fox hired director Tim Story after his ensemble work on the Barbershop comedies.

Ioan Gruffudd was very excited about showing off to his Welsh parents that he was working on a major Hollywood production. Unfortunately, the day they came to visit him on set, he was filming an elevator scene.

Jessica Alba's underwear scene was added after the actress had agree in the film.

In the early 90's Bernd Eichinger's option on the rights to The Fantastic Four were about to expire, to avoid this he commissioned Roger Corman to make a film as quickly as possible so he could keep hold of the rights. This was mainly to thwart Chris Columbus who was after the rights at the same time. Corman's version only cost $2 million, neither him or his cast and crew knew that the film was dumper-bound. It has however been seen in bootleg and download versions, with the general critical consensus being that it was a terrible movie.

Ioan Gruffudd's efforts to keep an American accent continually were hampered by the fact he would receive new script pages on a regular basis, forcing him to learn new lines at short notice.

Chris Evans improvised most of his dialog.

Laurie Holden, who plays the fiancée of Michael Chiklis's character Ben Grimm, would later appear alongside Chiklis in the final season of his TV series "The Shield" (2002).

Reed's smart phone, which he uses to control the holographic presentation at the beginning of the movie, is a Samsung SPH-i700 on Verizon. Verizon was a marketing partner for the film.

Jason Schombing, who plays the suicidal man, was recommended by his good friend, Michael Chiklis (the Thing, who rescues him).

During the pier conversation between Reed and Sue, not only were the actors not together (which is relatively common in filmmaking), they weren't even in the same country. Jessica Alba was filmed in New York City, while Ioan Gruffudd was filmed in Vancouver, BC, Canada.

When Johnny holds up a Thing toy (it says the "Clobberin' Time" line), it's an original action figure from the 1970s.

For most of the shoot, Michael Chiklis was terribly uncomfortable in the hot Thing suit. The final street battle, however, was filmed in Vancouver in December, leaving Chiklis as the only comfortable one of the four (the rest were in the skintight blue uniforms).