'Fantastic Four' Casts Ralph Ineson as Galactus (Exclusive)

The Fantastic Four, meet your villain.

Ralph Ineson, the British actor whose three-decade career ranges from the Harry Potter movies to recent horror prequel The First Omen, has landed the plum part of Galactus, the antagonist in Marvel Studios’ The Fantastic Four.

The high-profile, big-budget outing, the Fantastic Four’s first under the Marvel Cinematic Universe umbrella, has been casting up in recent weeks ahead of a planned mid-summer shoot in England.

On the call sheet are Perdro Pascal as scientist Reed Richards/Mr. Fantastic, Vanessa Kirby as Sue Storm/Invisible Woman, Joseph Quinn as her hot-heated brother Johnny Storm/Human Torch, and Ebon Moss-Bachrach as Richards’ friend with body issues, Ben Grimm/The Thing. Also cast are Julia Garner as a female Silver Surfer and Paul Walter Hauser in an undisclosed role, which some have theorized could be Mole Man or the robot H.E.R.B.I.E. John Malkovich is also signed on.

Ineson is said to be playing Galactus, an intergalactic being who eats the life force of planets. And now he just picked the wrong planet to nosh on.

In the Marvel comics, Galactus, created by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby, has appeared as a towering human-like figure. The character made his big screen debut in 2007’s Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer, which portrayed him in the form of a CGI-generated cosmic cloud. It was an appearance that did not go well with audiences.

Matt Shakman is directing the new Fantastic Four feature, which has Marvel taking the interesting creative choice of setting the story in the 1960s, the era when the super-team was first created. Eric Pearson, Josh Friedman, Jeff Kaplan, and Ian Springer wrote the screenplay. Peter Cameron (WandaVision) has also done some writing on the project.

Ineson is currently on screens as a priest in 20th Century’s The First Omen and last year played a key role in Gareth Edwards’ The Creator. He previously had a role in Robert Eggers’ Viking drama The Northman and reteams with the filmmaker, with whom he first worked on acclaimed horror movie The Witch, for vampire thriller Nosferatu, whose A-list cast includes Nicholas Hoult, Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Emma Corrin, Bill Skarsgard and Willem Dafoe. Focus releases Nosferatu in December.. He is currently in production on Guillermo del Toro’s Frankenstein along with Jacob Elordi, Oscar Isaac, Mia Goth and Christoph Waltz. 

Ineson is repped by Gersh and Gordon and French.