In a shock, the villain Red Ghost played by actor John Malkovich has been cut in The Fantastic Four: First Steps. The revelation, confirmed by director Matt Shakman, comes just a week before the Marvel film is set to release in the US on July 25. This is a surprise given that Malkovich’s Red Ghost has already appeared in teaser trailers for the movie, suggesting that the decision to remove the actor was made late in the editing process. That said, Shakman has revealed the reason why Red Ghost, otherwise known as Ivan Kragoff, was left on the cutting room floor for Fantastic Four 2025.
Why was John Malkovich’s Red Ghost cut from Fantastic Four 2025?
Director Matt Shakman suggests that John Malkovich’s Red Ghost was removed from The Fantastic Four: First Steps to better balance the movie by not introducing too many characters.
In an interview with Variety, Shakman said that “it was heartbreaking not to include [Malkovich] in the final version of the movie,” despite him saying that the actor was “brilliant…and gave it his all” for his appearance in the movie. The scenes that include Maklovich’s Red Ghost come at the beginning of the film in a montage where The Fantastic Four is shown fighting against various villains that include Ivan Kragoff and Harvey Elder (or Mole Man).
“When we were building a ’60s retro-future world, introducing all of these villains, introducing these four main characters as a group, as well as individually, introducing the idea of a child, there was a lot of stuff to balance in this movie,” the director continued, “and some things had to go ultimately in terms of shaping the film for its final version.”
In the comics, Russia’s Red Ghost follows in The Fantastic Four’s footsteps by building his own spacecraft with the intention of having him and a group of apes be blasted by cosmic rays so that they would receive superpowers. It’s unclear if the character has the same origin story in the movie (and it looks like we’ll never find out), or if the villain might appear in a different movie in the MCU.
John Malkovich revealed that he had turned down offers from Marvel for other parts in the MCU, because he felt they didn’t pay him enough money for the effort. He had joined the cast for Fantastic Four 2025 in part because of his prior work with Shakman’s 2014 film Cut Bank.
