REG E. CATHEY cast in ‘FANTASTIC FOUR’ as Dr. Franklin Storm.

Fantastic Four has found its fantastically stormy father of Sue and Johnny. Does that sentence make sense? What is sense, anyways? Let’s drink! Seriously though, cool news. Reg E. Cathey has been cast as Dr. Franklin Storm.

The latest actor to join the cast of Fox’s movie reboot of the Fantastic Four should inspire some speculation about what shape the movie will take. It may also inspire some racist message board meltdowns, because people are terrible.

Actor Reg E. Cathey has been cast as Dr. Franklin Storm, father of Fantastic Four members Sue and Johnny. The elder Storm is not a fixture of most FF stories, but he played a key role in the team’s formation in the Ultimate Universe, so his inclusion in the movie underlines the idea that the movie is strongly based on that vision of the characters. It also implies that family elements will be very much to the fore.

Cathey may be best known to audiences as Freddy, the owner of Frank Underwood’s favorite barbecue joint in the Netflix series House of Cards, or as Carcetti staffer Norman Wilson in HBO’s The Wire. Perhaps by chance, his children in the FF movie are played by House of Cards co-star Kate Mara as Sue Storm/Invisible Woman, and The Wire co-star Michael B. Jordan as Johnny Storm/Human Torch. The movie also stars Miles Teller as Reed Richards/Mr. Fantastic, and Jamie Bell as Ben Grimm/The Thing.

Like Johnny Storm, the character of Franklin Storm is white in both the Marvel comics universe and the Ultimate comics universe, whereas Cathey and Jordan are black. This may suggest that Kate Mara’s Sue is adopted, or that the Storms are a blended family with children from two previous relationships. But honestly, in a movie about cosmic rays and super-powers, we’re not holding out for exposition that explains how something as commonplace as a racially diverse family is possible. [Comics Alliance]