One of the more storied productions in recent memory is that of 20th Century Fox’sFantastic Fourreboot. The 2015 film floundered at the box office and received scathing reviews, and mere hours before it hit theaters its director took to Twitter to basically disown the cut that was being released.
Rumors and reports swirled over what had happened.Josh Trankearned the directing job hot off of making the low-budget sci-fi filmChronicle, but clearly something went wrong. Until now we’ve only heard reports and rumors about what happened, about who really directed the reshoots, and about Trank’s behavior. But now Trank is telling his side of the story.
As part of a long, excellent profile over atPolygonin anticipation of the release of Trank’s new filmCapone, the filmmaker candidly recalls what happened withFantastic Four.
It started well enough. Trank was promised freedom to create his own version ofFantastic Four, but personally he was dealing with frustration and his own struggles to come to terms with life in the limelight afterChronicle. He turned to his friendJeremy Slaterto write the script forFantastic Four, and Trank told Polygon that the idea was for the sequel to be theFantastic Fourmovie everyone expected, while the first film would be a rough ride:
“The end of theFantastic Fourwas going to very organically set up the adventure and the weirdness and the fun. That would be the wish fulfillment of the sequel. Because obviously, the sequel would be, ‘OK, now we are [superpowered] forever and it’s weird and funny and there’s adventure lurking around every corner.’ But the first movie was going to basically be the filmic version of how I saw myself all the time: the metaphor of these characters crawling out of hell.”
But Trank and Slater came at the project from two different worlds. Slater was a genuine comic book fan and was eager to write for characters he loved, while Trank pushed back on any and all comic book-y aspects.
“The trials of developingFantastic Fourhad everything to do with tone,” Trank said. “You could take the most ‘comic booky’ things, as far as just names and faces and identities and backstories, and synthesize it into a tone. And the tone that [Slater] was interested in was not a tone that I felt I had anything in common with.”
Slater tried to get Trank excited about the comics he loved, but tells Polygon frankly that it didn’t matter if the Fantastic Four were fighting aliens or Mole Monsters, “Josh just did not give a shit.”
In an effort to retain control over what shape the film took, Trank acted as the go-between between Slater and the studio, and as Slater cranked out different drafts of the script, Trank would only deliver certain ones to the studio and would only tell Slater about certain notes received. Slater tells Polygon he didn’t see 95% of those studio notes, and adds that from the very beginning Trank told him he wasn’t allowed to speak to Fox without Trank present.
And so Slater left the project after six months, which opened the door for Fox to bring in its own writers to try and shapeFantastic Fourinto something shootable. Except that didn’t exactly work out. While Trank won early battles like castingMichael B. Jordanas Johnny Storm,Fantastic Fourentered production without a finished script—and most notably without an ending.
That created tensions, and Polygon reports that there was “at least momentary consideration over pulling the plug on the movie” after filming began. Trank was suffering personal trauma as well, as his dog died early on in production, which no doubt exacerbated heightened emotions during filming. Indeed, Trank admits that after reading posts on IMDb message boards from fans threatening to shoot him over casting Jordan as Johnny Storm, he slept with a gun:
“I was so fucking paranoid during that shoot,” said Trank. “If someone came into my house, I would have ended their fucking life. When you’re in a head space where people want to get you, you think, ‘I’m going to defend myself.’” Trank returned the gun after wrapping production.
Once filming ended, the first cut of the movie caught Fox off guard, Trank claims. He says they took issue with the morose tone, saying it “wasn’t for fans.” Reshoots were planned for the film—Trank claims right before production began, the budget was slashed by $30 million which included much of the finale, with the intention being that they would shoot the ending during a second round of filming. But these reshoots would not be overseen by Trank.
The director claims that editorStephen Rivkinbecame the “de facto director” of the film, and from Trank’s perspective was choosing the wrong takes:
“There are some editors, from my point of view, who prefer using takes for pacing over performance. So they’ll say, ‘He moved out of that quicker,’ or, ‘He did this quicker.’ It’s about a certain kind of a rhythm that they are looking for… I maybe saw a couple of shots that really resonated.”
Reshoots got underway with new pages written by other writers as producersSimon KinbergandHutch Parkeroversaw production. Trank tried to write his own pages to steer the film in his direction, but they were ignored. He recalled the reshoots experience to Polygon:
“It was like being castrated,” he said of being on the set, which was overseen by Kinberg and producer Hutch Parker. “You’re standing there, and you’re basically watching producers blocking out scenes, five minutes ahead of when you get there, having [editors hired] by the studio deciding the sequence of shots that are going to construct whatever is going on, and what it is that they need. And then, because they know you’re being nice, they’ll sort of be nice to you by saying, ‘Well, does that sound good?’ You can say yes or no.” This time, Trank said yes. He wanted to keep his job.
Trank reveals elsewhere in the piece that at the same time, he was working on the Boba FettStar Warsmovie for Lucasfilm that Kinberg was producing. He signed on to direct the standaloneStar Warsfilm a few months beforeFantastic Fourstarted filming. But once whispers of theFantastic Fourturmoil reachedKathleen Kennedy, it became clear to Trank that he was likely about to be fired. He and Kennedy agreed that he would sit outStar WarsCelebration in April 2015, and he told his managers he wanted to back out ofStar Wars. “I quit because I knew I was going to be fired if I didn’t quit,” Trank recalls.
It unfortunately sounds like there’s not even really a “Trank Cut” ofFantastic Fourto be released someday, as the script was in flux as production began and they never even shot an ending that Trank wrote. We saw plenty of behind-the-scenes footage that pointed to the inclusion of the Invisible Car and actors likeToby Kebbellhave lamentedmore intriguing, darker scenesleft on the cutting room floor, but it very much sounds likeFantastic Fouris sadly just a film that was a “work-in-progress” all throughout shooting and never really coalesced in the end.
Who’s to blame? Is it Fox for going back on their desire to give Trank creative freedom, or Trank for making a comic book movie when he had no interest in comic books in the first place? I don’t think it’s as easy as pointing a finger. In hindsight, Trank’s time probably would have been better spent on something he was passionate about, but it’s also clear Fox got cold feet and tried to rework the entire film while it was in mid-air.
Trank has since moved on and is about to release his first new film in five years,Capone. There’s talent there to be sure, and I’ll be curious to see whatCaponehas in store. As forFantastic Four, well, it’s probably just best left forgotten rather than trying to suss out who did what or what other version might exist.
