Pedro Pascal and ‘Fantastic Four’ Cast Appear Onstage at Comic-Con 2024

Marvel fans are gearing up for a fantastic 2025. 

Cast members from The Fantastic Four, premiering in theaters July 25, 2025, surprised fans at San Diego Comic-Con on Saturday, July 27. The highly anticipated movie stars Pedro Pascal as Reed Richards a.k.a. Mister Fantastic; Vanessa Kirby as Sue Storm a.k.a. Invisible Woman; Ebon Moss-Bachrach as Ben Grimm a.ka. the Thing; and Joseph Quinn as Johnny Storm a.k.a. the Human Torch. 

In San Diego Convention Center’s Hall H, Marvel Studios president Kevin Feige, 51, introduced the film’s director Matt Shakman. The cast, they said, were too busy preparing to being filming next week. However, after a sizzle reel offering glimpses of them in action, Pascal, Kirby, Moss-Bachrach and Quinn emerged to thunderous applause.

Pascal, 49, said he’s known Shakman for 25 years. His favorite part about joining this iconic cinematic universe: “New family.”

Kirby, 36, noted that she and Quinn, 30, bonded as onscreen siblings and the only Brits in the cast. “I don’t think I’ve laughed so much in a rehearsal period before,” she recalled. “When you read the comics, you feel a lot of joy… hopefully we can bring that into the movie.” 

Moss-Bachrach, 47, said he received advice from an alumnus of the Marvel Cinematic Universe on how to act with its advanced technology. “I got a very nice text from Mark Ruffalo,” he revealed, “to just kind of demystify the process of motion capture, something I’ve never done before.”

Once off-stage, Pascal and Kirby caught up with PEOPLE and shared that they had yet to receive any advice about joining the MCU from those who’ve come before, but Kirby was looking forward to catching up with her “old friend” Sebastian Stan, who was supporting his next Marvel film Thunderbolts*, later.

“We’re the newbies,” Kirby tells PEOPLE.

“We’re the newbies and we’re in the newbie process,” adds Pascal. “We fly back tonight and start the movie.”

“Yeah, we are,” Kirby responded. “First day [is] in 24 hours.”

Centered around a group of astronauts who develop superheroic powers upon being exposed to cosmic rays in space, it was The Fantastic Four, from creators Jack Kirby and Stan Lee, that launched the Marvel Comics universe back in 1961. 

In the new reboot of The Fantastic Four, Julia Garner, John Malkovich, Paul Walter Hauser and Natasha Lyonne are set to costar.

The new film follows previous big-screen iterations of the iconic characters: a 2015 remake outside the Marvel Cinematic Universe starring Michael B. Jordan, Miles Teller, Kate Mara and Jamie Bell; plus films in 2005 and 2007 starring Chris Evans, Jessica Alba, Ioan Gruffudd and Michael Chiklis. (In addition, John Krasinski played a parallel version of Reed Richards in 2022 MCU installment Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness.)

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The Fantastic Four will come after Marvel Cinematic Universe installments Captain America: Brave New World (in theaters Feb. 14, 2025) and Thunderbolts* (in theaters May 2, 2025). Also announced in Comic-Con’s Hall H: Robert Downey Jr.‘s return to the MCU, as Doctor Doom.

San Diego Comic-Con runs July 24–28. Marvel Studios’ The Fantastic Four premieres in U.S. theaters on July 25, 2025.