The actors say they worked for scale, the bare minimum that the Screen Actors Guild allows any performer to be paid. Really, it cost them more than t
The actors say they worked for scale, the bare minimum that the Screen Actors Guild allows any performer to be paid. Really, it cost them more than they got back. “I had an acting coach who said to me, ‘Whatever your first break is, you need to put money in marketing and advertising and boost that,’” Smith says. He sponsored his costars in the run-up to what they believed would be a gala premiere at the Mall of America. “I ended up paying about 15 grand for a publicist,” he says. “We went to children’s hospitals. We did radio shows. We had articles.”
At one point, flying back from a sci-fi convention, Smith gave a VHS of the trailer to a flight attendant, who put it on the airplane’s televisions. Hyde-White still remembers the rounds of applause that followed. “We knew we had a hit when US Airways liked it,” he says.
“They arranged conventions and autograph signings,” says Staab. “We traveled around promoting it, and not only was there an audience—there was a huge audience. It was a very excited and enthusiastic audience. These comic book fans were being acknowledged—that they were important, that their passion was important. It represented them and their world.”
Then they learned the challenging truth about Eichinger’s deal with Marvel. “They didn’t want anything to come of it. They didn’t want it to make any of their other properties look bad,” Underwood says
It was a tough lesson about show business. “For some outside force to decide, ‘Well, we’re going to scrap this so that we can make a more expensive one down the line,’” Staab says. “You go, ‘Okay, well, that’s the business part of it.’”
The ’94 movie was the butt of many jokes, but its status as a lost movie also gave it a kind of cache. In 1990, Matt Salinger played Captain America in a film now remembered mainly for the plastic ears affixed to the side of its patriotic hero’s head. If The Fantastic Four had been released, says Underwood, it likely would have met the same fate: indifference. “It probably would’ve gotten panned and trashed and then that would’ve been that. But because it has this whole fun Hollywood yarn that goes with it, it made for great storytelling.”
“That mystery is what became iconic,” Smith adds. “In a crazy twisted way, it’s a blessing that this happened.”
The ’94 castmates were overjoyed earlier this month when the movie website joblo.com declared their movie the best Fantastic Four adaptation, not counting the modern Marvel Studios production—even if that’s a low bar. “It felt great,” Smith says. “Look at the other ones that they’re compared to, and their budgets. Trust me: If we had a bigger budget, we’d be kicking some serious butt.”
More importantly they were seen by the current imaginative team at Marvel Studios. As First Steps got underway, “Rebecca Staab and her manager reached out to the casting people and kind of tossed it out there: ‘Hey, do you think the production would consider putting us all in cameo kind of roles?’” Underwood says.
The Marvel Studios braintrust loved the idea. The ’94 stars felt like out-of-wedlock cousins, finally being invited to the official family reunion—or at least the film’s southern California reshoots, which happened this past May.
Hyde-White and Staab are still working actors with dozens of credits to their names. Hyde-White has had roles on Landman, Reasonable Doubt, and movies such as Gods and Generals and Catch Me If You Can, while Staab was on The Night Agent, Superman & Lois, and Family Law. They were given speaking lines as newscasters in First Steps.
Underwood is now a pastor, and Smith is a writer and tech entrepreneur. Their cameos are as bystanders in a factory, but all four got a spotlight moment in the newsreel that plays near the beginning of the movie. “There’s this whole montage of people around the city saying, “Thank you, Fantastic Four…. Thank you, Fantastic Four,” Smith says. “We say that.”
But really, this was Fantastic Four’s way of saying thank you to them.
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