Andy Serkis is the motion-capture guy when it comes to movies, and he helped pioneer the method way back during the Lord of the Rings trilogy.
Though Serkis may have his Marvel days behind him, it’s been revealed that he’s actually had a hand at working on The Thing/Ben Grimm for Marvel’s Fantastic Four: First Steps. This was confirmed by actor Ebon Moss-Bachrach during an appearance on Jimmy Kimmel Live. Moss-Bachrach says:
“Andy Serkis, who’s sort of the godfather of motion capture, he’s got this company called The Imaginarium, which is at Pinewood Studio where we shot Fantastic Four, and he was very generous.”
While the Thing suit was originally practical for the 2000s Fantastic Four movies, this time he’s going to be completely motion capture—like Marvel did with the Hulk and Thanos. Moss-Bachrach describes the process:
“I’ve seen a very crude rendering as it takes a while to build this stuff. They have so many animators working on this. I wear these motion capture suits, two cameras right here so they’re capturing absolutely everything, every nuance, every expression, every thought in my eye.”
Though we’ve gotten a look at photos of the Thing for the movie, we have never really seen it in action yet. What we do know that he’s going to be fairly large—larger than the Thing in the 2000s movies—and he’s going to have the prominent brow that was a feature of the Thing in the comics.
With the movie set to come out in July, fans are wondering when Marvel is going to be ready to give fans the first official trailer for the film. If anything, they could be gearing up for the release of Captain America 4; maybe after that movie comes out, we can finally get a look at Marvel’s First Family.
Catch Fantastic Four: First Steps when it releases in theaters on July 25.
