Two-Time Oscar Nominee Cut From ‘Fantastic Four’

One of Hollywood’s biggest names had his scenes cut from Marvel’s next big movie.

After previously announcing that John Malkovich would play the series’ classic villain Ivan Kragoff a.k.a. Red Ghost, The Fantastic Four: First Steps director Matt Shakman told Variety that they had to cut his role out of the MCU’s next big tentpole.

His scenes came at the beginning in Fantastic Four: First Steps, detailing the titular family’s early years of becoming superheroes—including their first major rival, Red Ghost and his team of Super-Apes.

While Shakman said Malkovich “was brilliant in it, and gave it his all,” his scenes were ultimately cut for time. It’s a curious move, given that the first teaser trailer for Fantastic Four: First Steps even shows a shot of Malkovich in character.

But given the amount of characters that the movie has to establish—the Fantastic Four themselves, plus the Silver Surfer and Galactus, plus, likely, whatever other cameos Marvel throws in the mix—there wasn’t enough room for Red Ghost’s storyline, Shakman said.

“There were a lot of things that ultimately ended up hitting the cutting room floor,” he told Variety. “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.”

Shakman actually worked with Malkovich on his feature film debut, 2014’s indie crime thriller Cut Bank. Malkovich helping Shakman get his start as a director made cutting his parts out even harder, he said.

“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,” Shakman 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.”