‘Fantastic Four’ Trailer Electrifies CinemaCon With Silver Surfer’s Debut (and Vanessa Kirby’s Pregnant Superhero)

“The Fantastic Four: First Steps” electrified the audience at CinemaCon 2025, with a sterling villain reveal and a bundle of superhero joy.

During the Marvel Studios presentation to the annual convention of movie theater owners in Las Vegas, division head Kevin Feige sent a video message from the set of “Avengers: Doomsday,” hyping up an extended look at the market’s big introduction to the titular four. The story unfolds in a retro-futuristic dimension of Earth, and is led by Pedro Pascal, Vanessa Kirby, Joseph Quinn and Ebon Moss-Bachrach.

The Fantastic Four sees four astronauts remade into superheroes after exposure to cosmic rays in space. Reed (Pascal) gains the ability to stretch his body to astonishing lengths. Reed’s main squeeze Sue (Kirby) has powers to become invisible and create force fields. Sue’s brother Johnny (Quinn) can turn his body into fire which gives him the ability to fly. And Ben (Moss-Bachrach), Reed’s best friend, has morphed into The Thing. That means giant, orange boulders for a body, giving him super strength and perpetually low self-esteem. 

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In the new trailer, we learn up top that Reed and Sue are expecting a baby, and get a nice shot of Kirby rocking a bump. This would mark the first time Marvel has featured a working mom superhero. In their timeline, the group of heroes are noted celebrities. They appear on talk shows and are subject to fawning thank you videos from children and firemen. It seems there’s nothing they can’t face, even the prospect of finding babysitters while saving the world.

Enter the Silver Surfer — the slick and menacing (and female) villain received with screams and cheers in the CinemaCon theater. The surfer tells the quad squad that their planet has been marked by alien powers for annihilation.

“We will face this together,” Kirby reassures an anxious Pascal. “We will fight it together — as a family.”

Marvel has been on its back foot for the past two years. Box office flops like “Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania” and “The Marvels” put the once infallible superhero cash machine into question. This was particularly true in the case of the studio’s ability to weave humorous and emotional storytelling with best-in-class action. The “slump” narrative is not without holes. “Guardians of the Galaxy 3,” released in 2023 performed well. Last summer’s “Deadpool & Wolverine” blew everyone out of the water, grossing $1.3 billion.

The studio’s television efforts like “Secret Invasion,” which serve as all-important “bridge content” to keep interest in its films high, was not widely appreciated. “Agatha All Along” and the two-season “Loki” series, however, were streaming hits and garnered awards attention.

Much has been written about Marvel’s stumble, and chief Feige has been playing both offense and defense since. With “Fantastic Four: First Steps,” however, creatives involved are heralding a return to form.

“I believe that this will go down in history as one of the ones that started a new tide of successful storytelling for the company,” actor Paul Walter Hauser said in late March. “Sort of in the same way that ‘Guardians of the Galaxy’ and ‘Black Panther’ hit. They both hit in a certain way. I believe we are about to hit.”