Skywalker Sound’s Matthew Wood and Danielle Dupre take to Jay Stobie at Medium.com about their involvement in developing the sound of the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s latest box office hit, The Fantastic Four: First Steps.
Featuring an intergalactic expedition set against the backdrop of a retro-futuristic world, Marvel Studios’ The Fantastic Four: First Steps (2025) was destined to require a wealth of distinctive and compelling sounds to accompany the escapades of Reed Richards (Pedro Pascal), Sue Storm (Vanessa Kirby), Johnny Storm (Joseph Quinn), and Ben Grimm (Ebon Moss-Bachrach). Director Matt Shakman (It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia [2005-present], WandaVision [2021], Monarch: Legacy of Monsters [2023-present]) enlisted Skywalker Sound for this enormous task, bringing the team onboard to shape the soundscape for Earth-828 and shepherd it through to its final mix.
Skywalker Sound supervising sound editor Matthew Wood (Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith [2005], Guardians of the Galaxy [2014], The Mandalorian [2018–2023]) and re-recording mixer Danielle Dupre [Loki (2021–2023), Obi-Wan Kenobi (2022), Agatha All Along (2024)] spoke with Skysound.com about their work on The Fantastic Four, chronicling Skywalker Sound’s initial involvement in the film’s preliminary stages, their creative relationship with the director, the insight they invested into the sounds of Galactus and H.E.R.B.I.E., and much more.
A Perfect Prelude
Matthew Wood served as The Fantastic Four’s supervising sound editor alongside his Skywalker Sound colleague Josh Gold, who also assumed some sound design duties on the project. “I worked with all the sound editors for dialogue, ADR, Foley, sound effects, and design,” Wood tells Skysound.com. “Josh and I came on to Fantastic Four early to sort out droids and other subjective elements, whose sounds are not going to be cut from a library but rather made specifically for this film. Marvel has a giant legacy of sound that’s come from Skywalker, and if there’s anything that touches upon that legacy, we’re going to use it. At the same time, this particular version of Earth was new to the Marvel Cinematic Universe, so there was a lot to be created.”
Wood and Gold coordinated with Matt Shakman to ensure everything the director requested would be delivered, while Skywalker Sound’s Robert Stambler and Ian Chase were embedded at Marvel’s picture department, so the material that Skysound was crafting could, as Wood states, “get right in front of them and be integrated into their picture edit. The edit was happening fairly aggressively, so as they’re cutting the picture and evaluating it, we wanted them to hear our most current sound effects and dialogue.”
Re-recording mixer Danielle Dupre praises the collaborative environment the director championed on The Fantastic Four, remarking, “There were many occasions, like with the end bonanza where Galactus is King Kong-ing through the city or with Sue’s magic, where we presented ideas to Matt Shakman, and he was always all for it. One of the best parts about this project was the collaboration across the board, not just amongst our Skysound crew, but with Matt Shakman and [editors] Nona Khodai and Tim Roche.”
This symbiosis manifested in ways that extended beyond the film itself, such as when the filmmakers’ preparations for early public reveals at San Diego Comic-Con in 2024 helped determine some of Skywalker Sound’s earliest sonic priorities. “Matt Shakman and [executive producer] Grant Curtis kept us in the loop as far as the hot-button items that would be revealed at the event. The Fantasticar was going to fly over the heads of the crowd in Hall H, so we wanted its sound to feel big and throaty and cool and retro,” Wood shares. “Once Josh locked that in, I don’t think it deviated much from that once it was in the film.”
Earth “Tones”
One of the team’s most crucial assignments centered upon establishing the retro-futuristic sounds of the alternate universe’s 1960s-era Earth-828. “Danielle and I had both worked on WandaVision with Matt Shakman, and he definitely knows how to build a world. We knew this place needed to feel unlike anything we’ve heard previously in Marvel. It had to feel modern yet still have a vintage patina similar to The Jetsons [1962–1963],” Wood recalls. “Coming up with that sonic landscape was difficult, as was determining whether items would be able to make particular sounds in the 1960s timeframe that we were loosely basing Earth-828 on.
“All the synth tones that Josh was using to create the sound of the Baxter Building and the different areas the Fantastic Four visited had a unique feel,” Wood continues. “Each location had its own sound, and it was challenging to assemble that and have it sound similar to something like Space Mountain at Disneyland. That was one of the descriptions that were bandied about by Matt when we discussed what he wanted this world to sound like. The refinements were constant. We watched an early version of the cut and had a session with Matt to talk about what sounds he wanted to go with, so we were fairly integrated into that process. After that, a lot of our work was based on our own instincts and what we gleaned from our meetings.”
An Audible Antagonist
As the Skywalker Sound re-recording mixers on The Fantastic Four, Dupre and Lora Hirschberg divided the sound elements across two categories, with Hirschberg mixing dialogue and music while Dupre mixed the sound effects, Foley, and sound design elements. “We sit on a big dub stage that is made to mimic a theater where you’d watch the film. We have a mixing console in the middle, and we take all of the elements that our amazing collaborators from upstream have prepared for us — dialogue recorded on set, ADR, loop group, the score, and the sound design made by our in-house team — and cut it in sync and creatively to the film,” Dupre elaborates, “And we mix them all together in real time against the picture in front of us.”
One of Dupre’s most memorable assignments focused on Galactus (Ralph Ineson), the film’s gargantuan antagonist. “Galactus is something like 40 stories tall,” Dupre explains. “In The Fantastic Four, the actor portrays Galactus’s face and voice, but the rest of what we see of Galactus is all CG [computer graphics, created by Industrial Light & Magic]. His body is composed of a metallic suit. I worked closely with our sound designer, Josh Gold, to try to understand what Galactus would sound like when he moves around. Josh took sounds from our library, but he also recorded new sounds of pieces of metal, rocks, movement, and creaks so we had an even larger library to choose from.”
These pieces were then assembled in a manner that reflected how they believed Galactus would sound when leaning forward, standing up, or completing other motions. “Sound-wise, Josh and I worked together to bring Galactus to life on screen,” Dupre notes. “There are a variety of different creative choices in which elements we used to make Galactus sound like a giant metal beast, but on the dub stage, we also had to figure out how we were going to place the sounds in the room to make it seem like he is actually larger than life — that the scale is there and he is towering over us when he’s speaking. One of the bonuses of a digital workflow is that you have endless amounts of options, and you can keep shooting and changing up until the last minute.”
Read the article in full here. The Fantastic Four: First Steps is available on 4K Ultra HD, Blu-ray, and DVD from October 20th, 2025, at Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk.
