During an interview with Screen Crush, screenwriter Jeremy Slater has been discussing his work on last year’s box office bomb Fantastic Four. Revealing that he spent around six months working on 10-15 drafts for the superhero reboot before ultimately being replaced by director Josh Trank and producer Simon Kinberg, Slater suggested that the final film played out very much like the opening 45 pages of an early 130-page draft – albeit with ‘Planet Zero’ referred to as the Negative Zone, and home to Annihilus – although the remainder of the script had much more material:
“In addition to Annihilus and the Negative Zone, we had Doctor Doom declaring war against the civilized world, the Mole Man unleashing a 60 foot genetically-engineered monster in downtown Manhattan, a commando raid on the Baxter Foundation, a Saving Private Ryan-style finale pitting our heroes against an army of Doombots in war-torn Latveria, and a post-credit teaser featuring Galactus and the Silver Surfer destroying an entire planet,” said Slater. “We had monsters and aliens and Fantasticars and a cute spherical H.E.R.B.I.E. robot that was basically BB-8 two years before BB-8 ever existed. And if you think all of that sounds great…well, yeah, we did, too. The problem was, it would have also been massively, MASSIVELY expensive.”
SEE ALSO: In (partial) defence of Fantastic Four
Cramming so much into the film would certainly have required a massive budget, and Slater said that he understands why 20th Century Fox was reluctant to commit: “Would you spend $300 million on a Fantastic Four film? Particularly after the previous two films left a fairly bad taste in audiences’ mouths? … It’s understandable that everyone involved would take steps to minimize their risk as much as possible. Unfortunately, those steps probably compromised the film to a fatal degree.”
What do you make of these details? Would it have improved the film, or led to an even bigger failure for the studio? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below…
Originally published August 16, 2016. Updated April 15, 2018.
