The superhero genre has been dominating the TV and film industry, largely thanks to the Marvel Cinematic Universe (which is streaming with a Disney+ subscription). Folks who have been watching the Marvel movies in order will recall how, prior to Disney's acquisition of 20th Century Fox, the Fantastic Four were kept out of the shared universe. The 2015 Fantastic Four movie is somewhat infamous nowadays, although screenwriter Jeremy Slater recalled how confident he originally was about it... even comparing it to Christopher Nolan's Dark Knight Trilogy.
Prior to Marvel's first family joining the MCU in First Steps, Josh Trank's Fantastic Four flopped in theaters back in 2015. In a conversation with THR, Slater got real about his original expectations for the blockbuster, saying:
But there was a good two-year period there where I was walking around very confident. I was like, ‘You guys, just wait for Fantastic Four. We’re the next Christopher Nolan. We’ve got the next [Dark Knight] trilogy on the way.’ You always go in with the highest of hopes and the best of aspirations. But sometimes the projects don’t turn out the way that you dreamed about or envisioned. When you’re a writer and you’re playing in other people’s sandboxes, it’s really out of your control. You don’t really have any bearing on the quality of the finished product. You just hope that your collaborators all want to make the same movie you wanted to make.
Hindsight is 20/20, and there was no way that the Mortal Kombat II writer could have predicted how infamous his Fantastic Four movie would end up being. Marvel fans took umbrage with how the characters look and acted, and the movie ended up being a critical and box office disaster. It lost tens of millions of dollars for the studio, cutting off its chances of a sequel before the franchise could get off the ground.
Trank's Fantastic Four movie also had some drama behind the scenes. There were tons of reshoots to try and save the movie, while actress Kate Mara has been open about how "messy" the experience of shooting was. In the same interview, Jeremy Slater was asked if he was privy to any of the reported drama, responding with:
Not at all. I worked really extensively with Josh Trank, and I had a great time doing it. I was really creatively fulfilled and excited. I thought I wrote an awesome script, and then I got the call that you almost always get on these big blockbuster movies: ‘Hey, we’re going to bring in some fresh eyes.’ Then the next time you see the movie is when you’re sitting down at the screening three years later.
Being a film writer definitely sounds like a unique job. Because while you're helping to make projects into a reality, the job can often mean that you're not actually present on set. And so even Slater was surprised when seeing how the movie actually turned out. He went on to share how little he knew about what was going on when Fantastic Four was filming, offering:
So I wasn’t privy to whatever drama happened on set. I wasn’t even really privy to the fact that my entire script had been thrown out. It wasn’t until I was sitting there in that first audience and realizing, 'Oh no, something happened here.' There was nothing in there that remotely resembled what I had set out to do.
Yikes. If not even the screenwriter of the movie knew what was happening with the 2015 flop, what hope did it have? Despite talent behind and in front of the camera (seriously the cast was stacked), Fantastic Four didn't end up being the project that anyone signed up for. It was a critical and box office failure and was even nominated for multiple Golden Raspberry Awards.
The 2015 Fantastic Four movie is streaming on Disney+, and the MCU version of the titular team will return to the big screen when Avengers: Doomsday hits theaters on December 18th as part of the 2026 movie release list.
