That Marvel Movie So Bad It Was Never Released Will Resurface in the MCU, Kevin Feige Confirms

There’s a very strange chapter in Marvel’s history that most people don’t know about: a Fantastic Four movie made in the early 1990s that was never officially released.

This English-language German film was produced on a shoestring budget and was executive-produced by Roger Corman, known for low-budget movies, and Bernd Eichinger. The main reason for making the movie wasn’t to hit theaters but to keep the film rights to the Fantastic Four characters.

The story followed the classic origin of the team, showing how Reed Richards, Susan Storm, Johnny Storm, Ben Grimm, and Victor Von Doom got their powers and first clashed. Reed and Victor started as college friends trying an experiment involving a comet called Colossus, but things go wrong.

After a crash landing, they gain superpowers: Reed can stretch his body, Susan can turn invisible, Johnny controls fire, and Ben’s skin becomes like stone. Victor turns into the villain Dr. Doom. The movie ends with the team coming together but facing struggles, especially Ben, who feels like a freak.

The cast included Alex Hyde-White as Reed Richards and Rebecca Staab as Susan Storm, with Jay Underwood playing Johnny Storm and Michael Bailey Smith as Ben Grimm. Joseph Culp played Victor Von Doom.

Despite trailers and some promotion, including a planned premiere in January 1994, the movie never officially came out. Actors even paid for their own publicist to promote the film and showed clips at Comic-Con, but just before the release, everything was stopped. The studio took control of the film negatives and issued cease and desist orders.

More recently, Marvel Studios head Kevin Feige surprised fans by revealing that the actors from this unreleased 1994 movie will actually have cameos in the new Fantastic Four film, bringing this lost project back into the spotlight in a unique way.

There’s been a lot of speculation about why the movie was shelved. Stan Lee, one of the creators of the Fantastic Four, said in 2005 that the film was never meant to be shown and was only made to keep the rights.

He said, “That movie was never supposed to be shown to anybody.” But Roger Corman disagreed, saying they had a contract to release it and that Bernd Eichinger bought him out of that contract. Eichinger himself said they hadn’t planned to make a cheap B-movie and had hoped to release it but were stopped.

According to Eichinger, Avi Arad, then a Marvel executive, called him to discuss the film. Arad didn’t want the low-budget movie to hurt the franchise and offered to pay back the money spent to keep the film from coming out. Arad later recalled buying the film for a couple of million dollars and destroying the prints, even without seeing it, to protect the Fantastic Four brand.

Even though it was never officially released, the film has leaked online and been seen by many through bootleg copies. Fans curious about this lost piece of Marvel history can find it on YouTube and other sites.

In 2015, a documentary called Doomed!: The Untold Story of Roger Corman’s The Fantastic Four was released. It features interviews with Corman and others involved in the movie, explaining what happened behind the scenes.

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