If you were on Twitter Thursday afternoon, you might have spotted a surprising tweet from Josh Trank. Just hours before Fantastic Four, his first big-budget studio movie, began screening in cinemas around the country, the director claimed that the cut seen in theaters is not his vision of the story.
The tweet was up for awhile and has been preserved because this is 2015 after all. In it, the Chronicle director wrote on his verified account, “A year ago I had a fantastic version of this. And it would’ve received great reviews. You’ll probably never see it. That’s reality though.”
That’s some amazing candor from the young director, who has been dogged by negative press ever since shooting started on Fox’s Fantastic Four reboot. There were rumors - which he denied - that he exhibited poor behavior on the set and that there were reshoots. It was also reported that Kingsman: The Secret Service director Matthew Vaughn was even called in to shoot new scenes.
And in the middle of all this, he was fired by Lucasfilm and Disney from directing a Star Wars Anthology movie.
Reviews for Fantastic Four started surfacing last week and they weren’t good. (We weren’t impressed either.) It’s currently at 9 percent fresh on Rotten Tomatoes. Despite that, the $120 million film is still predicted to make around $40 million this weekend, notes Variety.
Again, the tweet was an incredible surprise. Most directors at least wait for the public to see a film before disowning it.
image of ‘Fantastic Four’ cast courtesy of Roger Wong/INFphoto.com