THE SKINNY: While promoting the fourth season of NIP/TUCK today, that series’ star Julian McMahon revealed to iF that he is indeed going to be returning as Dr. Doom in FANTASTIC FOUR AND THE SILVER SURFER.

"We haven’t got a script yet," says McMahon. "The script hasn’t been put out and I’m not going to start until the end of August or September. Right now, I’m literally every day, 16 hours a day on NIP/TUCK."

Of course, he will be shooting both the movie and the new season of NIP/TUCK simultaneously but NIP/TUCK creator Ryan Murphy says that it was important to accommodate McMahon’s schedule to do both.

"With success comes success," says Murphy. "And if you get an opportunity to do a sequel to a hugely fantastic movie, do I want to help one of my lead actors to do that? Absolutely. So we have accommodated that and we will. I think that’s important. To say, ‘no,’ and stomp your foot when you can move dates around and make things available to the actors is the right thing to do, so we’re doing that."

While McMahon is a big fan of the comics, he says he’s not quite sure where Doom will be heading in the sequel.

"There are so many [stories]," he admits. "Obviously the Marvel world is split up between a bunch of different property ownership, so what you can do and what you can’t do, depends on who owns it. Fox owns a certain part of it and Marvel owns a certain part of it and that really tells us where we’re going. They come up with the ideas and scripts and I just perform."

Since Doom was completely covered in his costume by the end of the first FANTASTIC FOUR, the big question comes – is he just providing a voice, or will he actually be seen on screen.

McMahon smiles and says, "No, actually, it’s mostly me -- like me. I haven’t got a script yet, but I’ve been told Dr. Doom creates a Femme-bot like copy of himself or something. I don’t know what it is. I don’t know ... I’m kidding."

So is he joking or is this really going to happen in the film?

"I’m kind of joking, but I know that idea was out there, so I thought it was funny," says McMahon who then adds, "I don’t think there is going to be as many prosthetics. That was tough. I would rather not do it again, but at the same time, I’ve signed up to do what I need to do."

During this summer’s hiatus from his series, McMahon starred opposite Sandra Bullock in the new suspense film PREMONITION due out March 9, 2006.

"It’s a psychological thriller," he says. "I play her husband. It’s a hard one to talk about. The best way to describe it is she wakes up one morning, with her beautiful happy life and her wonderful husband and children to find out her husband has been killed. And she wakes up the next morning and he’s not and the movie continues down that path."