Seth Grahame-Smith Polishes ‘Fantastic Four’ Reboot (Exclusive)

Author and screenwriter Seth Grahame-Smith has done polish screenwriting work on Fox’s reboot of Fantastic Four, which Josh Trank is directing.

Matthew Vaughn recently came on board to produce the Marvel superhero-based project, which is priority for the studio.

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Created by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby in 1961, Fantastic Four features a “family” of heroes — scientist Mr. Fantastic; his wife, Invisible Girl; her brother, the Human Torch; and Fantastic’s best friend, the Thing — who have sci-fi-tinged adventures.

Fox made two movies with a cast that included Chris Evans and Jessica Alba in 2005 and 2007, but despite doing solid business, they were not well regarded by the geek community.

Sources say that the new reboot is taking a grounded superhero and sci-fi approach to the heroes and will tap deep into the comics mythology, which featured not just the better-known villains such as Doctor Doom and Galactus but also alien races the Kree and the Skrull, and the anti-matter universe known as the Negative Zone.

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Jeremy Slater wrote the initial script.

Grahame-Smith is the best-selling author behind Pride and Prejudice and Zombies and Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter, the latter of which was adapted by Fox last year. The multi-medium maven penned the script for the movie as well as the script for Dark Shadows, Tim Burton’s take on the 1970s vampire soap opera.

He is repped by WME and Morris Yorn.