Doctor Doom Central To Fantastic Four; X-Men Crossover Possible

Three days ago, 20th Century Fox released the first trailer for Josh Trank's Fantastic Four. It did what teasers are supposed to do; tease! And a tease is exactly what we got with Doctor Doom, who is played by Toby Kebbell ("Black Mirror"). For a few seconds we see the back of Doom walking through a corridor and injuring a group of men when he unleashes his powers.

Screenwriter Simon Kinberg says Doom will be a central element in the film and is a bit more well rounded than the average supervillain. "He has aspirations and struggles that are a little bit more classically tragic than the other characters," Kinberg told Entertainment Weekly. "As much as it's an origin story of our heroes, it also tracks how someone can become a villain."

Besides writing the script for Fantastic Four, Kinberg also wrote screenplays for X-Men: Days Of Future Past and X-Men: Apocalypse, and EW wanted to know if there was a chance that Fox would have a crossover event with both of their comic book properties. "The reboot of FanFour really needed to work in and of itself," he explained. "We were doing something pretty radical with the tone of the movie. If we wanted to find a way to connect them to the X-Men, we could. There's a lot of precedent from the comics."

And what separates Fantastic Four from the others? "Part of what's cool about the Fantastic Four comics is that there's an emphasis on the science of science fiction," says Kinberg. "And we treat what would normally be considered a superpower as a trauma. They don't just go up a roof, jump off, and start swinging through the city. It's the opposite. What would happen if your body transformed, and you didn't have control over it?"

Fantastic Four will land in theaters August 7, 2015.