... literally just DAYS before shooting began and hijacked the whole third act! Plus they shut Trank out of the entire editing process You guys should really watch this (the interesting bits start 4 minutes in). It's really not some crazy conspiracy theory - it sounds credible and Collider is citing several sources from within the industry and even people who were directly involved in the film:

http://collider.com/collider-movie-talk-did-fox-destroy-fantastic-four/

Now nobody knows whether Trank would have delivered a good film without the studio's interference (and he might really be a dick), but I kind of get why he feels it's unfair that he gets all the blame for this film's failure. If what all those sources Collider cites are to be believed, then Trank really got scrêwed over good by the studio and never had a chance to make the film they had originally agreed upon making.

There are also reports that claim JOSH TRANK FOR PRESIDENT showed up high to work, mistreated actors, destroyed property, and just generally acted like a dick. Maybe he was just incapable of delivering his intended product and Fox was just forced to take it into their hands. Not defending Fox, but the project just sounds doomed from day one (rushed casting, unfocused vision, etc.)

Maybe he was just incapable of delivering his intended product and Fox was just forced to take it into their hands.

But they changed the film completely just DAYS BEFORE Trank even started shooting it. Imagine your shock as a director if you have agreed upon a script and a certain vision and at the last moment, your main action sequences get pulled! It might explain some of Trank's behaviour (if there's any truth to that at all), but it's just as possible that once Fox took over and started messing everything up that they made sure to discredit Trank early on by leaking rumors about his "questionable behaviour" to justify their weird decisions regarding this film.

it's just as possible that once Fox took over and started messing everything up that they made sure to discredit Trank early on by leaking rumors about his "questionable behaviour" to justify their weird decisions regarding this film.

Not really. The standard procedure in those cases is to fire the director either before filming (as happened with Edgar Wright and Ant-Man) or during the first week or weeks and get someone you can work with (as happened with Richard Stanley on The Island of Dr. Moreau, Arthur Penn on The Train, Charles Crichton on Birdman of Alcatraz, all of who ended up being replaced by John Frankenheimer, who was originally going to replace Paul Schrader on Exorcist Dominion before he died). If they part on civilised terms they put it down to 'creative differences'. It's much easier than carrying on shooting while waging a covert media campaign against a director you have no confidence in, especially since studios never feel the need to justify decisions people on the internet find weird.

Honestly, I can't say. The ultimate truth might be somewhere in between the stories proposed on both sides. It's possible that Fox didn't like JOSH TRANK FOR PRESIDENT's story treatment (which would make one wonder why they would have hired him and gave him the film in the first place) and decided to just implement change (it is their money and ultimately they want to design something for mass appeal, which again would seem strange that they would want to hire a guy who wants to supposedly think outside the box and deliver a new take on the genre).

Honestly, the entire project just seemed cobbled together quickly with very little forethought. Fox is an anal studio but there wasn't this many problems on the productions of the X-men films, for example, and even Sony's attempt at Spiderman didn't have this many problems (although in that case, I think Webb was just a hired hand used to make a product that Sony was comfortable selling. These superhero movies should seriously just be made by Marvel because they know their audience well and seem to have a consistent vision for their movies. Individual studios just was to make a buck with as little investment as possible. Or maybe just slow dow on them and try to deliver and honest to goodness standalone movie with no tie-ins and each with their own personalities before they get too generic. DC should stay at the pace they're at I guess, I only really care about Batman).

I think Fox didn't know just what they wanted with this film. Initially, they liked Trank's "body horror" approach and more grounded, sci-fi tone so they hired him. Then the fan back-lash started and they got seriously worried causing them at the last moment to ask for a completely different film. That's a nightmare for an artist. If Trank had been more experienced he would have walked right then (as Wright did on Ant-Man). But he was a first time director and probably feared if he did that, he would never get to work on a big film again (which is likely what now WILL happen after his idiotic tweet).

As I wrote on another thread, the project does seem to me awfully reminiscent of what would have happened if New Line hadn't fired and replaced Richard Stanley on The Island of Dr Moreau and instead of making the film he dreamed of (which the studio never really wanted to make) he'd have ended up doing a botched job of the film they'd settle for but didn't particularly want either that would be just as widely ridiculed as John Frankenheimer's salvage job.

Much like Richard Stanley, Trank may well be one of those people who could talk a great movie but just couldn't deliver on the film in his head when placed in a high-pressure big-budget studio picture environment, creating the situation where the studio had to take over and scale the film back to keep the budget on track and just to get something with a beginning, a middle and an end. Certainly if the piece Tranbk is supposed to have written is genuine, scenes of a character working on his car and a few action scenes wouldn't have mitigated the flaws with what stayed in the picture.

Everything you say could of course be true, but Trank's only film before FF was Chronicle, and despite its relatively low budget, it was full of special effects and didn't seem to suffer from any of the points you mentioned (like not having a start, a middle and an end or generally pacing issues). And Trank made that film with Fox.

Not having seen Chronicle I'll have to take its quality on trust (although I doubt the effects workload could compare to what he wanted to do with F4), but there's no shortage of capable low budget directors who have been completely lost when making the leap to big budget filmmaking and end up with films that run out of control before they even start shooting - Hugh Hudson on Revolution or David Lynch on Dune, where the only way the producers could get him to stick to the schedule and budget was by ripping pages out of the script every time he went overschedule, spring to mind. They often require very different skill sets.

"Chronicle" is pretty solid, but the effects are few, and often played (cleverly, admittedly) on the edges of the frame, so it's not the same kind of film technically at all.

It was a film that cost 40 million dollars (as estimated by pro.boxoffice.com), and that's a huge amount of money to be responsible for if you're a first time director. The film is full of special effects as for almost the entire time of the film, characters are flying around.

Yet Trank seems to have handled the pressure well enough and delivered a film that was liked by audiences and critics alike - and Fox was impressed enough with Trank that they hired him for FF. There was not a word of erratic behaviour to be heard regarding Chronicle's shoot, and Jordan obviously didn't mind working with Trank again at all.

The $40m figure is a guesstimate including marketing costs. The budget for Chronicle was around $12m, which is around a tenth of that for F4 and is in no way a huge amount of money for a genre film, first time director or not (and Trank had TV directing credits before Chronicle). It's the fact that he was able to deliver the film so cheap that was obviously one of the reasons Fox hired him after numerous other directors had declined to even pitch for the project: they were looking for someone who could deliver a film comparatively cheaply for a Summer tentpole. Which considering the reshoots obviously wasn't the case.

I shall defend Trank.

He may have been acting like a D-Bag and his vision could have been equally poor but the final result of the film is from FOX not Trank.

Yes, how dare Fox think that spending over a $100m on a film gives them any rights over how it turns out. No studio in the entire history of the film industry has ever thought that before.

Sure, it was their right to do that. But they hired him after they had agreed upon a certain vision and a certain script and a certain tone for the film. If a studio does that and then at the last moment wants to change everything they can hardly complain if the artist they hired isn't fully invested in the film anymore - because it's NOT what he had agreed on making, it's NOT his vision anymore and it's NOT the film he wanted to make. Fox had of course every right to do this; however, whether it was SMART to do this is highly questionable.

There are two other issues: whether the piece was really written by Trank (many think the article is a fake, not least because of the 'working on his car' bit) and if it wasn't, was Trank the one who changed things by belatedly adding the action scenes to a version that Fox were happy with only to be told there wasn't the money to do them? Did the budget for his vision get so out of control before shooting that it had to be scaled back? A lot of the time friction is caused by the filmmakers trying to get the studio to stump up more cash for things that were never part of the original outline.

Sure, what you say is possible, but nearly every critic slamming the film mentioned that there were just no big action scenes in the film (which would confirm what the sources cited by Collider claim).

So? Fox was paying for it. They had the right to try to protect their property from his ineptitude.

Mind you, I am not defending the idiots at Fox, but Trank seems even worse.

Yeah I imagine that Trank with full control version of the movie would be worse than the Fox producer's mandate version of the movie.

What makes you say that? The fact that you hated the approach he wanted to take with FF? Or that the one film he DID make before FF showed he was highly incapable?

They had the right to try to protect their property from his ineptitude.

But they imposed their changes on the film ONLY DAYS BEFORE shooting. So at that point, there was no reason for them to react to his alleged "ineptitude" - on the contrary: he had made Chronicle with Fox before and if they believed he was inept, they would never have hired him in the first place. Now Trank may or may not be a dick but I can understand that as an artist, he must have been very disappointed that Fox suddenly interfered to change at the last moment what they had agreed upon making.

But they imposed their changes on the film ONLY DAYS BEFORE shooting.

And how do we know that Trank wasn't the one changing the script at the last minute to include those action scenes and Fox said no? You're assuming that these scenes were something that Fox had agreed to in the first place rather than something he added at the last minute or reworked so that they were much more expensive than originally proposed and which couldn't be delivered within the budget for the film. Major setpieces are cut from films before shooting all the time, and always have been. For example, the mine cart chase scene in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom was originally intended to be in Raiders of the Lost Ark but was too expensive for the budget while a major fight scene with a swordsman in Raiders was turned into a throwaway gag because it was quicker and cheaper to shoot while so many of the crew were ill. This is not unusual or unique behaviour.

So at that point, there was no reason for them to react to his alleged "ineptitude"

Most of what happened (the reshoots, reediting the film) is in reaction to problems that manifested themselves during the shoot, but the pre-production phase usually offers very good indications of whether a director is going to prove a problem during shooting.

Most of what happened (the reshoots, reediting the film) is in reaction to problems that manifested themselves during the shoot, but the pre-production phase usually offers very good indications of whether a director is going to prove a problem during shooting.

You're saying this as if it were a fact. What makes you so sure with regards to this film? Any inside sources from Fox to back this up? And where ARE the big action sequences those kinds of superhero films usually have in FF?

It's really not some crazy conspiracy theory

Producers taking control of a film that they hired a still-wet-behind-the-ears director to manage?

It's their money, and it's their loss. Trank gets paid the same no matter what unless he's a producer too (doubtful).

I have a few points to make about your post:

- Perhaps Trank's vision involved the budget going to high, needing to be scaled back.
- Trank may have added those action sequences later in the process, causing the budget to rise too much.
- The third act was changed because the studio was unhappy with what Trank had produced.
- He was locked out of the editing process because they were unhappy with his work.
- We have only heard one side of the story so far, and the studio isn't there to destroy their own film.

The budget for the film was "only" $122 million. This is a relatively small budget for a film like this and would not allow for too many big action set pieces.

All valid points except for this:

The budget for the film was "only" $122 million. This is a relatively small budget for a film like this and would not allow for too many big action set pieces.

The Wolverine had the same budget and there certainly were enough action sequences in it (albeit not on the scale of films like Days of Future Past).

But the action sequences in The Wolverine were still quite "small", in that they weren't that heavy on visual effects or particularly large scaled, which is the type of action required for a FF film. The visual effects for the Thing and the Human Torch alone in action sequences would be more costly than anything in The Wolverine.

Could be you're right - I'm in no position to comment on that since I don't work in special effects and have no idea whether the effects for The Wolverine were more complex or costly than anything in FF.

I should point out that as I haven't seen the film I am uncertain how much action is already in it. So perhaps there is still a lack of action that resulted from this poor decision by Fox.

I also heard other major action sequences were cut because the visual effects weren't finished.

As anon points out, it depends on just how 'major' these action scenes were: Wolverine is primarily fight scenes (and the second film very deliberately scaled down the budget from the first standalone Wolverine film by around $30m) but with characters whose superpowers extend way beyond claws and 70s sideburns the cost of shooting them could have been prohibitive.

It's really not some crazy conspiracy theory

Producers taking control of a film that they hired a still-wet-behind-the-ears director to manage?

It's their money, and it's their loss. Trank gets paid the same no matter what unless he's a producer too (doubtful).

I have a few points to make about your post:

- Perhaps Trank's vision involved the budget going to high, needing to be scaled back.
- Trank may have added those action sequences later in the process, causing the budget to rise too much.
- The third act was changed because the studio was unhappy with what Trank had produced.
- He was locked out of the editing process because they were unhappy with his work.
- We have only heard one side of the story so far, and the studio isn't there to destroy their own film.

The budget for the film was "only" $122 million. This is a relatively small budget for a film like this and would not allow for too many big action set pieces.

All valid points except for this:

The budget for the film was "only" $122 million. This is a relatively small budget for a film like this and would not allow for too many big action set pieces.

The Wolverine had the same budget and there certainly were enough action sequences in it (albeit not on the scale of films like Days of Future Past).

But the action sequences in The Wolverine were still quite "small", in that they weren't that heavy on visual effects or particularly large scaled, which is the type of action required for a FF film. The visual effects for the Thing and the Human Torch alone in action sequences would be more costly than anything in The Wolverine.

Could be you're right - I'm in no position to comment on that since I don't work in special effects and have no idea whether the effects for The Wolverine were more complex or costly than anything in FF.

I should point out that as I haven't seen the film I am uncertain how much action is already in it. So perhaps there is still a lack of action that resulted from this poor decision by Fox.

I also heard other major action sequences were cut because the visual effects weren't finished.

As anon points out, it depends on just how 'major' these action scenes were: Wolverine is primarily fight scenes (and the second film very deliberately scaled down the budget from the first standalone Wolverine film by around $30m) but with characters whose superpowers extend way beyond claws and 70s sideburns the cost of shooting them could have been prohibitive.

The more I read the more I am convinced that Trank was simply the wrong choice for this project..and everything that has happened with the film stems from Fox's basic mistake in hiring Trank.

When you sign on to do a big budget film in a well known franchsie, you put limitations on yourself...you have to include what made the Franchsie popular in the first place. Trank seemed unable or unwilling to do this,and wanted to take the Fantastic Four into a Dark Place that simply did not fit the Franchise.
Of course the studio is going to take action when that happens.

For the record, I liked Chronicles quite a bit, but, frankly, I don't see anything in the film that would cause me to think that Trank as a good fit for a Fantastic Four film.