How ANT-MAN’s Peyton Reed Quit FANTASTIC FOUR


No, not THAT Fantastic Four movie.

Fantastic-Four-fantastic-four-52371_1024_768

Yeah. That one.

It needs no introduction; reviled by fans and audiences (to an extent), neither of these movies were particularly successful despite grossing a decent amount at the box office. They were, in almost every regard, terrible. A lot of that was due to Fox’s meddling and restrictions, and a lot of it was also down to director Tim Story. However, if history had gone down a different path then the movies could have been very different – maybe even good.

It’s not a new revelation that Peyton Reed almost directed Fantastic Four back in 2005, but it wasn’t until now that he opened up about the experience. He doesn’t really insult Fox but you can tell that it really wasn’t a pleasant working environment, as with so many films from the studio in that time period.

I was a huge Marvel fan when I was a kid and knew ‘Fantastic Four’ inside out and felt they were always the crown jewel of Marvel. So I went in and got [hired for] the movie and I developed it for the peyton reed ant-manbetter part of a year with three different sets of writers.

But it became clear after a while that Fox had a very different movie in mind and they were also chasing a release date… so we ended up parting company. I felt like I couldn’t make the movie I wanted to make in that environment. The environment at Fox in 2003 was very different to the environment at Marvel in 2015. Fox at that time had a very specific idea; they wanted to pitch it much younger than I wanted to and I always felt like they were treating those characters like B-level characters. I never felt like they understood the real strength of that property.

I actually feel like Joss Whedon’s first ‘Avengers’ did a lot of the same things that I would have liked to have done in ‘Fantastic Four’. These massive battles in the streets of Manhattan for example. But I’m psyched for Josh Trank’s version of ‘Fantastic Four’. I know nothing about it but I know I really liked ‘Chronicle’ so I’m hopeful. I think there is a great ‘Fantastic Four’ movie yet to be made.

In an alternate universe somewhere, Fantastic Four was directed by Peyton Reed and was a hit, as were the sequels. In that universe, Ant-Man crashed and burned with the loss of Edgar Wright. Or maybe neither of those things would have happened. I guess we’ll never know, but I’d love to hear more from Reed on what his movie would have been like.

I’ve gotta agree with him on the Avengers comparison – that, to me, is how a movie adaptation could work. Not by making it dark and gritty but instead by embracing what the comics actually are. It’s probably going to be a while until we get a great movie out of them, like Reed says, unless this new one ends up being somewhat good.

Click back to Yahoo! Movies to read some more from the director about Ant-Man and how he almost ended up with Guardians of the Galaxy (more alternate timelines! Would James Gunn have directed this film?!), but there are a shitload of spoilers there, some which I would have preferred not to read. Well, the lengths we go, right?

Ant-Man is out tomorrow, July 17th. Apparently it’s quite good.