Flame on! No, put the matches down. We’re talking about the Fantastic Four. According to Chris Evans – Mr Human Torch himself – plans for a sequel to the superhero success are well underway. “Oh yeah, we’re doing one,” he told totalfilm. “We start next June.”
Despite the less-than-stellar critical reception for the first outing, the squabbling supers are definitely returning. No script has been penned yet, and possible villains are only at the spitball stage. “There’ll definitely be new villains,” says Evans. “They said something about Mole Man and The Puppet Master. I think they should bring Dr Doom back!” Don’t hold your breath, kids. Julian “Doom” McMahon has already indicated he’s not under as strict a contract as the rest of the cast. Still, it’s amazing what a truckload of cash can do for your decision-making process.
Evans also hinted that Jessica Alba’s Sue Storm and Ioan Gruffud’s Mr Fantastic might be tying the knot. 20th Century Fox has already pencilled in its release date – 4 July 2007 – but whatever the storyline ends up being, Evans is hopeful that the filmmakers ramp up the action for round two: “I hope we have a lot more enemies, and much more of an aggressively paced product. We’ve done the origin story, now let’s get our hands dirty.”
Before he slips back into the blue Lycra, however, Evans has been busy on UK shores shooting Danny Boyle’s Sunshine, a sci-fi drama about eight astronauts sent to the dying sun in a last ditch effort to save planet Earth.
“I play Mace; he’s the ship’s mechanic. He’s the straight-shooter on the ship: honest, a little detached – he’s not the most bubbly fellow.” From what totalfilm learned on the set of Sunshine, Boyle, working from an Alex Garland script, isn’t doing a typical Hollywood actioner.
“It’s much more claustrophobic. It turns into a very tricky situation where there’s not enough oxygen for the whole crew to make it back, and it becomes this human drama of ‘What would you do?’ It explores the darker side of human nature.”
