MOVIE NEWS – With Marvel Studios’ new Fantastic Four on the horizon, the screenwriter of Fox’s infamous reboot finally opens up about what went wrong behind the scenes. The 2015 Fantastic Four movie is legendary for how bad it was, and the script was a mess too. Now, for the first time, we get an insider’s look at what derailed this cinematic disaster.

By now, everyone knows that 2015’s Fantastic Four was a train wreck—fans, critics, even the filmmakers themselves. Directed by Josh Trank and released by 20th Century Fox, it quickly became one of the most maligned superhero adaptations in recent memory. Promised as a darker, more realistic reboot of Marvel’s First Family, it landed as a cold, aimless, soulless misfire.

Slater vs. Trank: Creative Chaos From Day One

Screenwriter Jeremy Slater, then a Hollywood newcomer, was one of the unlucky names attached to this doomed project. Years later, with hits like Moon Knight and Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire under his belt, Slater has opened up about the failed movie in an interview with ComicBook. He describes a total creative disconnect: Slater envisioned a fun, emotional Marvel-style adventure, while Trank wanted a gritty, grounded, Batman Begins-inspired story. The result? A film that lacked heart, spectacle, and any real spark.

Slater claims he wrote up to 15 different drafts, each one truer to the comics. In his original take, the Baxter Building was basically “Hogwarts for nerds,” a haven for genius kids and wild sci-fi experiments, just like the Future Foundation comics. Reed and Ben were lifelong pals, Doom was a brilliant, damaged Latverian prodigy luring Reed into risky science. There were supposed to be monsters, aliens, the Negative Zone, and even a cybernetic dino called Annihilus.

The Movie We Never Got: Studio Fear and Creative Carnage

Slater dreamed big—his early drafts were superhero epics, climaxing with a Saving Private Ryan-style showdown in Latveria, Doombots everywhere, and Mole Man unleashing a 200-foot beast in Manhattan. Even Galactus and Silver Surfer were set to appear in a post-credits scene! But Fox wasn’t about to risk $300 million on a franchise with a losing record, so almost everything was cut. Only a single line—Reed’s “Don’t explode” during the teleportation test—made it to the final film. Everything else, from monsters to real adventure, vanished amid budget cuts and endless rewrites.

On top of the creative chaos, the production itself became a nightmare. Tensions between Trank and Fox boiled over, rewrites and reshoots took over, and Slater was shut out of the process, with no clue what was left of his work. The result was a film that was neither a classic origin story nor a proper sci-fi thriller—just a soulless mishmash that flopped at the box office and with critics alike.

Despite it all, Slater holds no grudges. In his ComicBook.com interview, he says he’s genuinely excited for Marvel Studios’ reboot, especially their bold creative choices and, finally, a true Jack Kirby-style Galactus. After the cloud-monster mess of Rise of the Silver Surfer, he’s eager to see Marvel do the villain right.

July Brings New Hope for Marvel’s First Family

It’s bittersweet to imagine the wild, heartfelt sci-fi epic that could have been. Slater’s scripts promised mad science, real drama, and epic comic-book scale, but studio fears and clashing visions killed that dream. Now, with Marvel Studios in charge and the new Fantastic Four coming July 25, the First Family finally seems poised for a real comeback.

Until then, you can always rewatch the 2015 flop on Disney+—if only to appreciate how far the franchise has come, or to remember that even Hollywood’s biggest disasters can teach the industry a thing or two, just as Jeremy Slater learned the hard way.

Source: 3djuegos