What You Need To Understand About The New John Krasinski, Reed Richards, ‘Fantastic Four’ Rumors

Out there in the wild west of Twitter today, I’m finding news starting to pick up steam that MCU fans are trying to twist into something that it isn’t. Namely, the idea that John Krasinski has a contract in place to play Reed Richards in the MCU for the long haul.

How did this start? It appears to be stemming from a quote from Anson Mount, talking about how weird the Illuminati sequence was, given that it was shot using stand-ins and he was never even in the same room with many of the other actors, Krasinski included. Here’s what he had to say to Esquire:

“No, [Patrick Stewart] was actually not there! [Laughs] He was shooting Picard. That was a very interesting shoot because my role came up in the reshoots. As you can imagine, several of the actors were quite busy. Patrick was not there. Chiwetel [Ejiofor] was not there. Krasinski’s contract wasn’t even done. He wasn’t there. We had actors playing those roles, knowing that they were going to either be substituting their shots or transplanting faces. I’ve never done anything quite like that, and I was in disbelief of how well it cut together.”

Catch that? Mount says “Krasinski’s contract wasn’t even done” and now, MCU fans are running wild with the idea that “John Krasinski has signed a contract to play Reed!” as if that confirms something.

It does not.

The only thing Mount means here is that everyone who showed up for this role is going to have some sort of contract in place, and Krasinski’s wasn’t even done yet. A contract does not mean a multi-year, multi-film contract, and could easily just be for this specific scene. Kevin Feige has come out and said he specifically got Krasinski for the cameo to fulfill fan-casting dreams, implying that may have been all it was. This quote absolutely does not confirm Krasinski is on board for more. Not at all.

This is compounded by further rumors today that some actor has signed on the dotted line to play Reed in Fantastic Four, Kang Dynasty and Secret Wars, though again, I cannot find anything resembling coherent sourcing on that, nor real sourcing for any of the past casting rumors which include a wide, wide range of actors. Krasinski could still end up with the part, it’s certainly not impossible, but the names we’ve seen thrown around have been You’s Penn Badgely, 50 Shades’ Jamie Dornan and The Walking Dead’s Andrew Lincoln. And again, the sourcing on that shortlist remains sketchy. The running theory is that Disney will put all this to bed at D23, and it may indeed be time, given that most of Phase 5 has all its casting worked out, and it’s time to move on to Phase 6, which will be anchored in part by the Fantastic Four (and the X-Men, but that hasn’t been officially announced yet). Stay tuned.

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