You Have To Hear About What The FANTASTIC FOUR Reboot Almost Was

By now you know that last year’s FANTASTIC FOUR reboot went down in flames, with plumes so magnificent that just about everyone loves to talk about what a disaster it was. But today let’s talk about what it could have been. 

Long before Josh Trank and Simon Kinberg took turns rewriting FANTASTIC FOUR, writer Jeremy Slater (THE LAZARUS EFFECT) was hired to pen the reboot. In a talk with Screen Crush, Slater described what his original ideas were for the reboot- ideas which Trank and Kinberg essentially killed once they took turns rewriting it.

Here’s some of what Slater described from his version of FANTASTIC FOUR:

  • His version would’ve centered more on the relationship between Reed Richards and Victor Von Doom, who worked together at the Baxter Foundation. Think of the dynamic between Xavier and Lensherr in the X-MEN movies.
  • While in the Negative Zone, the five of them would’ve encountered Annihilus, who he describes as “a pissed off cybernetic T-Rex.”
  • The confrontation would’ve found them getting hit by the radioactive waves that would bestow them with their powers
  • They’d leave Doom behind during their escape back to earth
  • Doom would be revealed to have defeated Annihilus and used the wreckage to create “a sort of living body armor” with his cosmic control rod

And then things would get really crazy…

I’ll let Slater tell you exactly what he had in mind, in his own words:

“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. 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.”

Yowza!

He’s right. This would’ve cost a lot, and Fox likely felt they weren’t ready to take that kind of a gamble with FANTASTIC FOUR, since it was rebooting a franchise that had left most people cold after 2007’s FANTASTIC FOUR: RISE OF THE SILVER SURFER

What do you think, though? Had Fox pulled the trigger on Slater’s version, do you think we would’ve ended up with a better movie? Discuss!

SOURCE: Screen Crush

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