‘Ant-Man’s’ Peyton Reed Says His Version Of ‘Fantastic Four’ Would Have Been Inspired By ‘A Hard Day’s Night’

Peyton Reed has directed two hit films for Marvel Studios over the last few years, “Ant-Man” and its subsequent sequel, “Ant-Man and the Wasp.” However, those films weren’t the first projects that the filmmaker worked on for Marvel. In fact, if Reed had his way, he would have directed a Marvel film years before “Ant-Man” and years before “Iron Man” changed the game.

In a rather lengthy and extensive Q&A with Collider, Reed discussed all things “Ant-Man and the Wasp.” However, he also took time to talk about his first (unsuccessful) foray into Marvel moviemaking, when he was hired to work on a potential “Fantastic Four” film. And when you see just how Reed describes the film, you may curse the day that Fox ever hired Tim Story (and eventually Josh Trank) to destroy Marvel’s First Family.

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“I developed it for about a year and we went through some different permutations and some different writers, but yes, one of the big ideas was a set-in-the-’60s thing that at the time was structurally gonna be basically like [The Beatles’] ‘A Hard Day’s Night,’ where we were not going to even deal with the origin story,” said Reed.

“A Hard Day’s Night” meets the “Fantastic Four?” Yes, please! Obviously, nowadays that could have been a no-brainer, but we can understand why Fox was probably a bit hesitant making that version of the superhero film. Of course, hindsight being what it is, the studio probably wouldn’t have lost anything swinging for the fences with Reed.

The filmmaker said he had to step away from the project when it became clear that Fox just wanted to “make a B-movie out of it.”

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However, all hope is not lost. It may be years and years after Reed first started work on “Fantastic Four,” but with his two Marvel Studios films under his belt, and a presumably close relationship with head honcho Kevin Feige, combined with the impending Disney/Fox merger, could the filmmaker get another shot at “Fantastic Four?” Or would he even want to?

“I’ll say that when I was working on ‘Fantastic Four’ all those years ago, Kevin was at Marvel at the time, he was a junior executive under Avi Arad,” explained the filmmaker. “So Kevin knows of my love and passion for ‘Fantastic Four.’”

Two versions (and three films) of the “Fantastic Four” have all been relatively terrible in their own ways (though the Tim Story films are leagues better than Trank’s). Perhaps Peyton Reed is the missing piece to the puzzle and will finally make a definitive “Fantastic Four.” Couldn’t hurt to try, right?