John Malkovich’s Red Ghost Cut From ‘Fantastic Four’; Director Says ‘It Was Heartbreaking Not to Include Him’ (EXCLUSIVE)

The Red Ghost has escaped!

Actor John Malkovich will no longer appear in Marvel Studios’ “The Fantastic Four: First Steps” as Ivan Kragoff, aka the Red Ghost, one of the earliest villains to battle the superhero quartet in the comics. Director Matt Shakman confirmed the decision to cut Malkovich out of the movie in a wide ranging interview with Variety about his career and his experience making the film.

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Malkovich’s scenes came early in “The Fantastic Four,” part of a lengthy sequence detailing the titular family’s early years as superheroes, including when they battled the Red Ghost and his team of Super-Apes. The first teaser trailer for the movie even includes a brief shot of Malkovich in character, and Shakman said the actor “was brilliant in it, and gave it his all.”

But the need to service an extensive cast that includes Pedro Pascal (as Reed Richards), Vanessa Kirby (as Sue Storm), Joseph Quinn (as Johnny Storm), Ebon Moss-Bachrach (as Ben Grimm), Julia Garner (as the Silver Surfer) and Ralph Ineson (as Galactus) — as well a story that begins years into the Fantastic Four’s superhero lives, as Reed and Sue welcome their first child — led the filmmakers to realize that Malkovich’s appearance wasn’t working with the full story.

“There were a lot of things that ultimately ended up hitting the cutting room floor,” Shakman said. “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 and some things had to go ultimately in terms of shaping the film for its final version.”

The director first worked with Malkovich on his feature debut, the 2014 independent crime thriller “Cut Bank,” which co-starred Liam Hemsworth, Teresa Palmer, Bruce Dern, Billy Bob Thornton and Michael Stuhlbarg. Shakman — who spent the 2000s and 2010s building a successful directing career in theater and in television — struggled for years to put together financing on the film, but he said that once Malkovich signed on, the actor “stuck with it for several years and never dropped out.”

The experience on “Cut Bank” made losing Malkovich from “The Fantastic Four” that much more difficult for Shakman.

“It was heartbreaking not to include him in the final version of the movie because he’s one of my very favorite humans and one of my biggest inspirations,” the director said. “As a person who walks the line between theater and film and television, there’s no one who is more inspiring than the founder of Steppenwolf Theater Company. What he’s done on stage as an actor and what he’s done as a director in theater as well as in film, and as just a film actor of incredible ability — I was honored he came to play.”

Other actors still set to appear in “The Fantastic Four” include Natasha Lyonne, Paul Walter Hauser, Mark Gatiss and Sarah Niles. The film’s world premiere is on July 21 in Los Angeles, and it will open in theaters on July 25.

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