With Fantastic Four finishing up its North American box office run with a dismal $56 million, it’s fair to say that 20th Century Fox’s reboot of the Marvel comic book series has been an unmitigated disaster. Speaking to THR, writer-producer Simon Kinberg has revealed that he was “disappointed” by the reception of the film, as well as commenting on Josh Trank’s decision to bash the film on Twitter ahead of its release.
“I haven’t really done a full diagnosis,” states Kinberg when asked where the film went wrong. “It was a hard movie to make, but I’ve made a lot of hard movies. I do think that there is a great Fantastic Four movie with that cast. But there’s so many different elements that need to come together perfectly. It’s like a collaboration between all these strangers. And if there’s a few things that don’t go right, it’s hard to recover from. I went straight from that into X-Men: Apocalypse. I haven’t had a lot of time to decompress. I’m obviously disappointed with the way it turned out.”
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“Honestly, I have no idea,” he added with regards to whether Trank’s tweet harmed the film’s box office. “I’ve had other movies not work before. For whatever reason, that movie not working became very public — and that was hard because you put a lot of time and effort and love into everything you do, and I really love a lot of people on that film and felt really close to the actors. Those are the guys whose faces are on the poster and are the most exposed. I hope we get to make more movies with them. But it was disappointing.”
Fantastic Four sees Josh Trank (Chronicle) directing a cast that includes Miles Teller (Whiplash) as Reed Richards/Mr. Fantastic, Kate Mara (House of Cards) as Sue Storm/The Invisible Woman, Michael B. Jordan (Fruitvale Station) as Johnny Storm/The Human Torch, Jamie Bell (Nymphomaniac) as Ben Grimm/The Thing, Toby Kebbell (Dawn of the Planet of the Apes) as Doctor Doom, Reg E. Cathey (House of Cards) as Dr. Storm, and Tim Blake Nelson (The Incredible Hulk) as Harvey Elder/Mole Man.