Chris Columbus, director of The Thursday Murder Club, recently revealed he was fired from 20th Century Fox’s original Fantastic Four movie after advocating for concept art that reflected the silver Age of Marvel. he had been slated to write and direct the adaptation, but ended up a producer after working on a script in the late 1990s.
In an interview with the fade to Black podcast, Columbus explained that Fox executives told him he possessed “too much of an opinion.” He recalled a meeting where he suggested the conceptual art shoudl emulate the style of Jack Kirby, the original artist for Fantastic Four, and the Silver Age of Marvel. “I left that meeting and on the way back to my house I got a call from the head of 20th Century Fox saying, ‘your fired. You had too much of an opinion,'” Columbus stated.
While Columbus received an executive producer credit on
Fantastic Four (2005) earned $333.5 million globally, while Rise of the Silver Surfer earned $302 million. Ioan Gruffudd, who portrayed Reed Richards, told Vulture that a trilogy was originally planned but ultimately canceled.
“The mindset was that we were going to do three,” Gruffudd said. “I notably loved working with Doug jones [as the Silver Surfer] on that movie, who’s just a terrific artist and an expert in the field of movement.”
Michael Chiklis, who played The Thing in both films, recently commented that the release of The Fantastic Four: First Steps has prompted a reconsideration of the earlier movies. Speaking with Collider, Chiklis argued that critics misjudged the films, pointing to audience reception and box office success as evidence they “got a lot right.”
“There were a lot of people, I think, critically who got it wrong,” he said. “They really maligned our films, and they were very underrated considering… they were very loved by the audience.”
Chiklis believes the recent MCU film has lead to a renewed gratitude for the 2005 and 2007 films, stating, “And now all these years later, people are sort of acknowledging like, hey, these films are family-friendly, fun movies… they got a lot right.” He added that the combined gross of nearly $700 million for the two films indicated they weren’t entirely misjudged.
