Without a doubt, one of the biggest superhero film failures of the modern era is 2015’s “Fantastic Four,” aka ‘Fant4stic.’ The Josh Trank-helmed feature not only suffered extreme behind-the-scenes drama, which led to the director publicly denouncing the film during opening weekend, but also was a massive bomb for Fox at the box office. Needless to say, fans weren’t ever going to see a sequel to the film. But that doesn’t mean the characters would have stayed on the shelf.
According to a concept artist who worked on “Deadpool 2” while original director Tim Miller was attached, the FF could have been redeemed (possibly) in the hugely successful Ryan Reynolds-led sequel. Of course, as we know now, Miller ended up departing the project after dreaded “creative differences” and helmer David Leitch stepped in.
However, in the art that was shared by Alexander Lozano (via Instagram), we see that Miller was attempting something very different for his version of “Deadpool 2.” The Fantastic Four would have used the same actors from the doomed 2015 film but in better costumes and more comics-accurate looks. The artist also shows his versions of Domino, Cable, and Juggernaut, all more closely resembling their comic book counterparts.
So, would we have seen the FF finally get their day in the sun via Deadpool? Who knows? Miller never got the chance to see his dream executed and with the pending Disney-Fox merger, the entirety of the Fox Marvel Universe is in a state of limbo. But it makes for a good “What if?” though.
That being said, this weekend brought other “Fantastic Four” news, as one of the three writers on the abysmal Trank film, Jeremy Slater, posted that he was joining the Stephen King adaptation “Tommyknockers.” And in doing so, he publicly apologized for taking part in the 2015 ‘FF’ film.
He tweeted, “…And when I finally got my foot in the door, I only had three dream projects on my bucket list. One was Marvel (umm…sorry about that one, guys), one was Star Wars, and the third, of course, was Stephen King…”
As fans anxiously await news on the Marvel Studios resurrection of the “Fantastic Four,” it’s obvious that people will quickly forgive Slater. It appears that job was a no-win situation, with Trank seemingly driving the production into the ground. And it sounds like Slater is rebounding quite nicely, so good for him!
And to end on a good note, here’s the latest TV spot for the upcoming release of “Deadpool 2” on Blu-ray, which brings back the hilarious baby legs joke from the film: