Simon Kinberg Says "Tone" Was The Problem With 'Fantastic Four,' Franchise Playing Important Role At Fox

So, what went wrong with 20th Century Fox‘s “Fantastic Four” reboot? We could spend the rest of the day enumerating all the mishaps and misjudged ideas, but studio interference, Josh Trank and Miles Teller nearly coming to blows, and the director disowning his own movie certainly didn’t help. So it’s pretty much of a buffet of options to choose from in terms of figuring out what went wrong. But what does Simon Kinberg think happened? Well, he points to tone as the overriding factor that derailed the movie.

READ MORE: Miles Teller Explains How ‘Fantastic Four’ Was “Unjustly Critiqued”

“I don’t think that there is, in any movie that doesn’t work, a single decision that is the reason that that movie doesn’t work,” he explained to Happy Sad Confused. “I think that there were many decisions we made along the way that led to a movie that people didn’t like and to a movie that I would do differently next time. I think the biggest takeaway for me the tone of the movie, while really interesting and ambitious, ran counter to the DNA of the source material. I think the source material of Fantastic Four is bright, optimistic, poppy in tone. There’s a sort of plucky spirit to those characters, and we made a darker, sort of body-horror kind of version of Fantastic Four, which again as I say it now sounds really interesting and cerebrally ambitious, but isn’t necessarily Fantastic Four.”

Well, we saw what Fox did when they went with “bright” and “poppy” with “Fantastic Four,” with the early 2000s pictures an example of everything comic book movies these days try not to do. And while you might think three cracks at the property would be enough for the studio, Kinberg emphasizes that Fox won’t be handing the superheroes over to Marvel like everybody wants them to, anytime soon.

“It’s a big part of [Fox’s superhero] plan going forward.… I would love to continue making movies with that cast,” he said. Well, good luck with that.

Additionally, Kinberg talks about his role in the “Star Wars” universe — he’s a consultant and writing a secret ‘Star Wars’ stand-alone film– and reveals that he knew what George Lucas‘ discarded treatment for Episode 7 was before it became “Star Wars: The Force Awakens.” He’s keeping mostly mum, but he does say many elements of it were used in J.J Abrams‘ film. Listen to the full talk below.