'Fantastic Four' Director Tim Story To Return To Superhero Movies With 'Night Wolf', Starring Kevin Hart

A decade before Josh Trank's disastrous Fantastic Four film hit theaters, director Tim Story tackled Marvel's First Family in a colorful, breezy, largely forgettable comic book movie. He directed a sequel two years later and has since been out of the superhero realm altogether, but now it looks like he's found his re-entry point.

Story is currently in negotiations to direct Night Wolf, which will reunite him with his frequent star Kevin Hart and aims to put a new spin on cinematic superhero storytelling.

Night Wolf is a new superhero movie from STX Films which is supposed to add a comedic twist to the well-worn genre. The company says the film centers on a "Meet the Parents-esque encounter where a man (Hart) meets his future father-in-law for the first time, only to discover he is secretly the superhero known as the Night Wolf." Hart sounds like an excellent fit to play a frantic, out-of-his-element straight man tossed into a world of complex and potentially hilarious family dynamics, and a new report from Deadline says Story is negotiating to direct.

As a veteran of big-budget superhero movies, Story seems especially well-suited for this project. He has the experience of being able to walk the line of keeping a superhero story grounded by fantastical, and his previous collaborations with Hart mean he's better-equipped than anyone to be able to modulate the actor's explosive, over-the-top performance style and dial it in to exactly what it needs to be. Story has directed Hart's concert specials Laugh at My Pain, Let Me Explain, and What Now?, and has also directed the actor/comedian in feature films like the Ride Along and Think Like a Man movies.

Story recently directed the 2019 Shaft film and has completed Warner Bros. upcoming animated Tom and Jerry prequel movie. Detective Pikachu screenwriters Dan Hernandez and Benji Samit wrote the script for Night Wolf, though no actor has been cast in the title role yet. Hart is 40 years old, so it should probably be someone who's at least fifteen years older than that, and I could imagine Keith David (The Thing), Richard Roundtree (Shaft), Dennis Haysbert (24), Forest Whitaker, or even Denzel Washington playing that older superhero part, assuming they're up for a role like that. If the father-in-law is a retired superhero, maybe they could get Louis Gossett, Jr. to do it, because that could be a cool echo of his role in HBO's Watchmen from last year.