Fantastic Four originally began with a James Bond-style opening, but the director explains why he pushed the "magic" idea into the cosmic second act

Fantastic Four director Matt Shakman has revealed that First Steps originally had a space-set opening, which involved Sue Storm giving birth much earlier in the Marvel movie.

"For a long time we had [Franklin] born at the beginning of the movie," Shakman revealed to Phase Hero. "Also in zero-G, also in a space station rescue, kind of a big James Bond '60s opening. But then I had this idea to put it in the middle of the movie, combine it with the Silver Surfer escape around the neutron star. It was taking two ideas that I really liked and putting them together – all of a sudden they felt like magic."

Admittedly, the premise of what the 'James Bond' opening could have been is a little vague, but was presumably more of a cold open involving the Fantastic Four dealing with a villain before things rapidly got worse and required Marvel's First Family at the peak of their powers. 007-heads will know, though, that Bond didn't travel into space until 1979's infamous Moonraker. Stop getting Bond wrong!

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Unsurprisingly, given Shakman has already had to scupper talk of a director's cut, that pregnancy scene wasn't the only Sue-centric sequence with Paul Walter Hauser's Mole Man that didn't make the final version of the first act.

"At the very beginning of the movie, Sue goes [to Subterranea] and kinda kicks back and has a drink with him," Sue Storm actor Vanessa Kirby told Collider. "Well, she can't because she's pregnant but he pours her water and she wishes it was whiskey. I just loved it. It was so fun to shoot. We went to the mines all the way up in the north of England to shoot it. It just represented Sue's working life… but there wasn't time. Maybe [in] the sequel?"

By our count, that's now three different sequences in the first act that were cut or moved – if you count an extended sequence involving John Malkovich's Red Ghost that didn't make the theatrical version. Don't go expecting a director's cut any time soon, however.

Fantastic Four: First Steps is now in cinemas. If you've already watched the movie, be sure to head over to our spoiler-filled guides on the Fantastic Four post-credits scene and Fantastic Four ending.