*sad trombone*
The Fantastic Four reboot flopped this weekend, in part from the many bad reviews and perhaps in part from director Josh Trank shouting “FLAME ON!” at every bridge Fox has. Now Entertainment Weekly has put together an extensive postmortem with insider gossip from several anonymous sources. The entire article is fascinating, but we’ll try to summarize the main takeaways.
After Josh Trank vacated the director’s chair for a Star Wars spin-off, he said he did so voluntarily because it wasn’t healthy for him. EW claims, via multiple sources, he was fired by Lucasfilm after they investigated the rumors about difficulties on the set of Fantastic Four.
EW also says “several high-level sources close to Fantastic Four spoken to independently of each other” credit the on-set problems to “combative and abusive behavior Trank demonstrated toward the crew, producers, studio and even the stars.” They say the studio pushed for Kate Mara to be cast as Sue Storm, against Trank’s wishes, and he reportedly didn’t get along with her. He also reportedly didn’t get along with Miles Teller — can’t really blame him — even though he fought the studio to cast him in the first place. (Never thought I’d say, “You should’ve listened to Fox,” yet here we are.)
Some of the sources defend Trank, saying the stress on set was due to delays in casting and script approvals, tens of millions of dollars in budget cuts, and last-minute script changes made by Fox.
Hilariously, Fox reportedly also objected to Trank interjecting most of the original elements of the comics. If true, it would explain why there are so many odd changes in the film, like inexplicably renaming the Negative Zone as “Planet Zero” instead. Why would a studio even make a comic book movie if they hate the elements of the comic in the first pla— HAHAHA just kidding. Of course they’d do that. Because money.
(Via Entertainment Weekly)
