Josh Trank: "You'll Never See My Movie"

The embattled director claims Fox altered his film as its release approaches.

Story by Matt Cummings

Let the Fantastic Four blame game begin. On the eve of its release, Director Josh Trank set the Internet ablaze on Thursday when he Tweeted - and then deleted - the following about his film:

And Josh Trank deleted his tweet. Good news, I still have it. The oral history lives: pic.twitter.com/AnZQ6ilM9r

— Mike Ryan (@mikeryan) August 7, 2015

The Tweet was soon removed by Trank, but not before Uproxx's Mike Ryan captured it. The event is another indication that things on the FF set were exactly what we reported, as the film has endured all kinds of problems. It started when the cast was announced, featuring a black Johnny Storm, an adopted Sue Storm, and a lead in Miles Teller, who's known mostly for his comedy. Then news arose of Trank's erratic behavior on set and claims that his pets trashed the rental home he was using during the shoot. That claim was later dropped, but the set reports of his “very isolated” behavior on set didn't. It was also revealed that producers Simon Kinberg and Hutch Parker had to complete the film in Trank's absence, and even had to re-shoot several scenes just 3 months before release.

Things got progressively worse when a film not even related to FF - the upcoming Star Wars Anthology: Rogue One that Trank was supposed to direct - announced that he had left the project. Whether Disney fired him or Trank quit, it was a clear message of concern to moviegoers about the prospects for Fantastic Four. Although moods improved somewhat when two trailers arrived, giving fans a look at Jamie Bell's The Thing and shedding more light on head baddie Dr. Doom (Tony Kebbell), the project wasn't out of the woods. Last week, after only a handful of critics were allowed to see the final cut (it's usually far earlier in the process), extremely negative reviews from sites like THR and Variety began to surface. At one point (and after 8 reviews), the film had just a 29% rating on Metacritic and even lower on Rotten Tomatoes. As of this posting, Metacritic's number has actually declined to 27% (based on a stunning 36 combined negative/mixed reviews).

And yet the film is set to beat the highly-rated No. 1 film of last week Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation. Perhaps that's everyone wanting to see whether all of the above affected the final product. Either way, we'll know soon enough: The Fantastic Four releases today nationwide.

Discuss this review with fellow SJF fans on Facebook. On Twitter, follow us at @SandwichJohnFilms, and follow author Matt Cummings at @mfc90125.