Top Film Industry Stories of 2015
#9: Fantastic Four Tranks

By Kim Hollis

January 18, 2016

I think an antonym might best apply to these four.

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If someone had told you two years ago that a reboot of Fantastic Four would make less than a million more domestically than the opening weekend of Ant-Man, you would have laughed them out of your presence, right? And yet, in 2015, that’s exactly the state of the Marvel nation. An ancillary character who is barely known even by comic book fans is worth far more than one of the most established franchises in the industry. What happened here?

When Fox set out on to bring Fantastic Four back to theaters, they were probably filled with so much hope. The original two films (2005 and 2007) were able to attract initial good audiences, after all. The movies themselves were simply not well-received, resulting in a disappointing overall gross that left money on the table and a general bad feeling about the franchise itself. The studio brought in writer Simon Kinberg, who had delivered with a solid script for X-Men: Days of Future Past, to work on the screenplay with director Josh Trank. Fox tentatively planned a multi-year schedule for Reed Richards, Sue and Johnny Storm and Ben Grimm.

Controversy took over quickly, however, as fans of the series instantly reacted negatively to the film’s casting. The story would explore a younger version of the characters than what is traditionally depicted in the comics, meaning that a who’s who of up-and-comers were cast. Miles Teller, who appeared in such critically acclaimed films as The Spectacular Now and the Academy Award-nominate Whiplash, would be Mr. Fantastic aka Reed Richards. Jamie Bell, perhaps best known for his breakthrough role of Billy Elliot in the movie of the same name, was cast as Ben Grimm/The Thing. For Sue Storm, Kate Mara was selected. All of these choices could have been open to discussion in their own right, but it would be the casting of Michael B. Jordan as The Human Torch that would set the internet ablaze.




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Our #10 story of the year touches on the issue of diversity in Hollywood, and the Internet and comic book fanboy reaction to a man of color as a character who had been white throughout the history of the series was a loud and generally unpleasant component of these events. The positive we can take is that choosing Jordan for this role brought some emphasis and priority to the importance of Hollywood’s problem of available strong roles for minorities. The negative is that people with limited imaginations and diehard fans were never going to accept Jordan as Johnny Storm, and many even viewed the selection as cynical, intended to broaden the film’s demographic base.

But that was really only the beginning of Fantastic Four’s troubles. As the film went into production, story after story emerged about the troubles occurring on the set. Rumors emerged that Trank would show up to the set late, or sometimes not at all. Others said that he mistreated the crew. Regardless of the truth of these contentions, it does seem certain that no one on set was having any fun.


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