Before he succeeded Edgar Wright on Marvel Studios’ latest offering Ant-Man, director Peyton Reed had a brush with the superhero genre when he was attached to 20th Century Fox’s Fantastic Four back before Tim Story brought Marvel’s First Family to the big screen for the first time. Speaking to Yahoo!, Reed has offered up a few details on his involvement, and what he had planned for the movie.
“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,” states Reed. “So I went in and got [hired for] the movie and I developed it for the better 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,” he continues. “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.”
Ant-Man is out today, while Fantastic Four is set for release on August 7th.
https://youtu.be/rTcdL3-dh2c?list=PL18yMRIfoszEaHYNDTy5C-cH9Oa2gN5ng
Originally published July 17, 2015. Updated April 14, 2018.
