There may be someone out there who enjoyed last year's disastrous Fantastic Four reboot, but if so they're keeping pretty quiet. At this point even 20th Century Fox have little good to say about the entire troubled production, which included a very public falling out with director Josh Trank. It would be one thing if this were the studio's first failed attempt, but it's their third when you include the hated-but-superior versions from a decade ago. And yet producer Simon Kinberg doesn't want this to be the end, even as he acknowledges how badly they botched things last time. He told Den of Geek...
“We didn’t make a good movie, and the world voted, and I think they probably voted correctly. And you can’t make a good movie every time out – not everybody does. We actually have a pretty good batting average, all things considered. But I think we made many mistakes when we made that movie – mistakes that we learned from and we wouldn’t repeat.”
Trank hoped to explore the Fantastic Four's sci-fi roots, which is commendable, but he wanted to do it in a way that was as dark as his directorial debut, Chronicle. For numerous reasons the combination just didn't work and Kinberg wants to go in a different direction...
“We’ll try to be truer to the essence of the tone of Fantastic Four, which is completely – well, not completely, but largely – distinct from the X-Men, which is brighter, funner, more optimistic tone. I think we tried to make a darker Fantastic Four movie, which seemed like a radical idea but we were kind of messing with the DNA of the actual comic instead of trusting the DNA of the comic.”
But one thing Kinberg doesn't want to change? The cast, led by Michael B. Jordan, Jamie Bell, Miles Teller, Kate Mara, and Kate Mara's atrocious wig...
“We want to make another Fantastic Four movie. We love that cast – I mean if I were to say to you now Michael B Jordan and Miles Teller, and Kate [Mara] and Jamie [Bell] are great actors – we love that cast. I love the comic, I mean I love it almost as much as X-Men.”
We'll see about that. Actually, we'll see about any of it. Fox was aggressively optimistic in setting up a February 2017 release date for the sequel, but yanked it off the schedule for obvious reasons. At this point fans are probably hoping they'll throw in the towel and strike a deal similar to the one made between Sony and Marvel over Spider-Man. Here's the thing: Fox isn't Sony. Sure, they've failed a bunch of times with Fantastic Four but they've also found tremendous success with their X-Men line. They'll probably keep taking a whack at this thing until some approach clicks with audiences.
