Fox Still Wants to Punish Audiences With FANTASTIC FOUR 2

Oh, Jesus.

I don’t need to recount the epic tale that is Fantastic Four – not the movie itself, but rather its production and controversy. Director troubles, shooting troubles, lack of faith, terrible reviews, terrible box office; that’s the gist of it. From basic industry calculations, Fox would have had to write off about a $40m loss on production, but they also spent a ton on marketing, meaning the total loss was over $100m more than that. Yikes.

Back when they still thought they could spin this into a new Marvel franchise, the studio set a sequel for June 9th, 2017. Everybody pretty much assumed that that was no longer happening, however it appears as if we were wrong. Chatting with MTV News, hot-shot X-Men and Star Wars producer Simon Kinberg revealed that the sequel is still on track. Somehow.

“I’m really focused on the next one. I was obviously disappointed. I was most disappointed that fans didn’t like it. I care more about them than I do anyone else. But I haven’t done a full deep dive on it. Do I think it was unfairly treated? I don’t know.”

No, no it wasn’t.

“I do believe there is a great Fantastic Four movie that we’ve made with that cast. So I’m gonna figure out what that is. We’re figuring out what that movie would be. I’d like that to happen.”

I would love for there to be a really, really good Fantastic Four film one day. I mean, The Incredibles did it, so why can’t Fox do it with the actual characters? The potential is absolutely there – it’s just been handled with the care and skill of a toddler taking a crap. It can be fun to make jokes, however at the end of the day it’s just fucking sad that the latest effort failed. This cast is really good, and the angle that Josh Trank and the studio originally went for had promise. It’s now near-impossible to follow up on that; yeah, you can just forget the first movie and make something more in-line with the comics that people will enjoy with the cast, but then why not just reboot again? Or give the rights back to Marvel?

If a sequel or some continuation ends up happening, then you can bet your ass it won’t be out in June 2017. There’s already been some chatter about the hypothetical Deadpool 2 nabbing that spot, which I think is something most of us would rather see. I mean, if a good filmmaker was attached then I might be slightly interested, but the story and characters that have been set up are just so boring and diluted that there’s no real reason for anyone to care. Even speaking from a purely financial perspective it would be a stupid decision.

Still, it’s an interesting conversation to have, and we’ll be sure to keep you updated on just what the hell is going on with this franchise over the coming weeks and months.