Is Fox Planning To Re-Cast ‘Fantastic Four’, Rewrite The Script, And Replace The Director?

Awhile back we learned which four actors were closing deals to star in Chronicle director Josh Trank’s Fantastic Four reboot: Michael B. Jordan as Johnny Storm, Kate Mara as Sue Storm, Miles Teller as Reed Richards, and Jamie Bell as Ben Grimm. As always, people complained. Michael B. Jordan was impressively calm about some of the worst comments.

Now Bleeding Cool reports Fox is “actively looking for replacements” for both director Josh Trank and screenwriter Simon Kinberg. They also say Fox now has “casting issues”.

On the other hand, Screen Crush says high-level sources at Fox have denied the rumor in its entirety, saying filming is still scheduled to start on April 21st and Josh Trank is on the set now. As reassuring as that seems, the rumor unfortunately coincides with a strange development: Josh Trank has deleted his Twitter account. He was active on Twitter up until now. Bad timing, dude.

Lending more credence to the studio’s denial is a casting call seeking actors to play soldiers in the film, and the job listing confirms the shooting starts April 21st in Baton Rouge, Louisiana.

UPDATE: Bleeding Cool posted another article saying this:

Our sources were impeccable. By which we mean those who had actually been approached by Fox for this gig. […] We are in no doubt that Fox are going ahead with their current production plans with Fantastic Four.

Right now. But, last week we were also in no doubt that they’d been looking to junk it all. And these aren’t mutually exclusive notions. It’s quite possible that no one they approached said yes. Bleeding Cool knows, directly, of two big names who said no.

Fantastic Four is set to open March 6th, 2015. As much of a clusterf*ck as Fantastic Four movies tend to be, I think we can all agree on one thing: if they fire Kate Mara, it’s clobberin’ time.

Banner images via Helga Esteb / Shutterstock.com, Joe Seer / Shutterstock.com, and Featureflash / Shutterstock.com.

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