A long-awaited Fantastic Four movie will get underway early next year. That’s the word from Matt Shakman, the Emmy-nominated director of WandaVision who was tapped to bring Marvel’s First Family to the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

While promoting his work behind the camera on Prime Video’s The Consultant, Shakman explained to The Wrap his decision to leave a fourth Star Trek movie he was to direct to instead helm the anticipated Marvel project.

“I had a great time working on Star Trek for a little over a year … I love that franchise, and I love that cast that J.J. [Abrams] put together, and it would have been an unbelievable pleasure to work with them,” he expressed.

Shakman continues, “But movies have different journeys and momentums and schedules are a little bit mercurial, and so when the Fantastic Four opportunity came up, it was just too hard to pass up … to go back home to Marvel, a place that I worked on WandaVision at, with those people who are wonderful collaborators.”

Shakman replaced Tom Holland‘s Spider-Man series director Jon Watts, who left the project in 2022; Marvel Studios later announced F4 was being bumped from its previous release date of November 2024.

The Fantastic Four characters — Mister Fantastic (Reed Richards); his girlfriend, Invisible Woman (Sue Storm); her daredevil brother Johnny “The Human Torch” Storm; and Ben Grimm aka The Thing appeared in a pair of 20th Century Fox movies in 2005 and 2007, then in a bomb reboot in 2015.

John Krasinski briefly portrayed a multiversal version of Richards in Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, only to meet an abrupt end at the hands of Elizabeth Olsen‘s Scarlet Witch.

Marvel Studios is owned by Disney, the parent company of ABC News.

Copyright © 2023, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.