With the release of X-Men: Days of Future Past, writer-producer Simon Kinberg has been busy on the promotional trail for the mutant superhero sequel, although he’s spent much of his time talking about Fox’s next X-Men release X-Men: Apocalypse [see here, here, here and here]. However, X-Men isn’t the only Marvel property under Fox’s control, and with cameras rolling on The Fantastic Four under director Josh Trank (Chronicle), Kinberg has taken a moment to discuss the reboot during a chat with The Daily Beast:
“Last summer, Emma Watts at Fox called me on the set of Days of Future Past and said, ‘We really want to do a new Fantastic Four.’ I said to her, ‘I’m interested but it depends how you want to do it.’ She said, ‘Talk to Josh Trank.’ We were shooting the Washington D.C. finale sequence in Days of Future Past and I talked to Josh, and he had such a clear vision of what he wanted to do with the film that was so different from the other movies—it was grounded, real, gritty, and what it would really be like if you went through a transformation and lost control of your body. That, coupled with him wanting it to be a coming-of-age movie, felt fresh to me.
“The tone of this movie will feel as unique as when you saw Iron Man, X-Men, or Batman Begins for the first time. It’s not as goofy as the first movies; it has humor in it, but the humor is much more real and comes from character, not pratfall jokes. It’s a much more dramatic film than it is a comedy. I would say it falls somewhere between [Sam] Raimi’s first couple of Spider-Man movies and Chronicle.”
The Fantastic Four is set for release on June 19th 2015, with a cast that includes Miles Teller (Divergent) as Mr. Fantastic, Kate Mara (American Horror Story) as the Invisible Woman, Michael B. Jordan (Chronicle) as the Human Torch, Jamie Bell (Nymphomaniac) as The Thing, Toby Kebbell (Dawn of the Planet of the Apes) as Doctor Doom, Reg E. Cathey (The Wire) as Dr. Storm and Tim Blake Nelson (The Incredible Hulk) as Harvey Elder.
Originally published May 29, 2014. Updated April 12, 2018.
