The Fantastic Four: While out promoting his latest movie, the aptly titled David R. Ellis cell phone thriller Cellular, Chris Evans told journalists that he is now one week into filming Tim Story’s take on Marvel’s The Fantastic Four. Right now, the cast is just going through some early dialogue scenes. "We haven't had much action yet," Evans said. "I think the whole first couple weeks is mostly dialogue."

Evans knows what he's in for later in the shoot, as the action sequences pick up, but he's prepared. "I'm not dreading anything. I think the only thing that's going to be difficult is all the harness work. I'm going to be in a harness a lot of the time for a lot of flying stuff, so I bet that's going to be pretty uncomfortable."

Most of the central cast has been on the set for the first week of shooting, including - Ioan Gruffudd, Jessica Alba and Michael Chiklis. However, Chiklis has not come out in his Thing costume yet, and Evans can't wait to see him. "No, no, no. They're not going to do computer stuff with The Thing. Did you see Hellboy? It's that type of [costume]. I haven't even seen it yet. I am so excited to see it. So he's going to have the full body thing and I've heard it looks awesome. I was talking to the director's assistant the other day. He said you look at it and it looks real. You get close, you'll be like, 'It looks like rock.' I can't wait to see it. I'm so psyched."

Evans will have to resist the temptation to poke Chiklis's suit. "I'm going to be as accommodating. I'm going to do whatever he tells me to do. I can't even imagine being in that outfit for an entire day, so I think everyone's just going to be really sensitive to his needs. Anything Chiklis wants, if he wants us to talk to him and keep him occupied, we'll talk to him. If he wants us to leave him the hell alone, we're going to leave him the hell alone. I think he has it hard. It's not going to be easy and I think we're all going to be ready to assist."

The costume that the other actors will wear is also slightly enhanced. "The beauty is the Fantastic Four uniform is this form fitting blue outfit. So they make these really cool, blue almost like wetsuits, but since we all don't have the perfect bodies for these wetsuits, they gave us muscle suits. These little suits that you put on first that have rubber muscles that are actually form fitted to our bodies. They do these body casts and then they add muscle in certain places where it's needed. So you put on this muscle suit and then you put on this blue uniform and you just walk around like you're chiseled out of stone, so it's great. I'm happy."

As it turns out, not everybody needed the muscle enhancement. "Actually, you know what? I don't think they gave Alba a muscle suit. But they made me wear one which is kind of upsetting, a little disappointing, but Alba does not have the muscle suit. Ioan and I do."


Fantastic Four was released July 8th, 2005 and stars Ioan Gruffudd, Jessica Alba, Chris Evans, Michael Chiklis, Julian McMahon, Hamish Linklater, Kerry Washington, Laurie Holden. The film is directed by Tim Story.