Chris Columbus has directed some of the most enduring blockbusters of all time, from “Mrs. Doubtfire” and the “Home Alone” films to the first two “Harry Potter” movies. But even with those movies under his belt, Columbus still found himself getting booted from 20th Century Fox’s original “Fantastic Four” movie. The director is credited as an executive producer on the movie “but had nothing to do with it,” he recently told the “Fade to Black” podcast.
“We were in a weird situation,” Columbus said. “On the first ‘Fantastic Four,’ I had worked on a script. There were a lot of writers involved. They were about to make a movie and I was producing it. I met with the director and had some ideas. I basically said, ‘Some of this conceptual art should feel more like Jack Kirby, the creator of the Fantastic Four, and should feel more like the Silver Age of Marvel.’ I left that meeting and on the way back from my house I got a call from the head of 20th Century Fox saying I was fired and had too much of an opinion.”
Columbus was in a phase of his career where we he was interested in superhero movies. He had circled “Spider-Man” before Sam Raimi took on the property, and he had also written a “Daredevil” script. But getting fired from “Fantastic Four” was a blow and “probably soured me a little” from the genre, he said. Columbus has no interest in helming a comic book these days.
“Over the years people have done it so well that I personally lost interest in making a superhero movie,” he said. “It started a little bit with ‘Spider-Man 2.’ When I saw what Sam Raimi did with that I thought it was a perfect superhero movie. Certainly Matt Reeves’ ‘The Batman’ with Robert Pattinson was a brilliant film, too. I realized I don’t have a desire to make those movies anymore because people are doing them better than I ever could at this point in my career.”
In an interview with Blackfilm.com 10 years ago, Columbus said he also was at odds with the studio over bringing Ben Grimm/The Thing to life on the big screen. He pushed for a “Fantastic Four” movie that utilized visual effects to bring The Thing to life, arguing you could “really never get the size of Ben Grimm if he’s not CGI or something.”
Tim Story directed 2005’s “Fantastic Four,” which featured Ioan Gruffudd as Reed Richards, Jessica Alba as Sue Storm, Chris Evans as Johnny Storm and Michael Chiklis as Ben Grimm. The film was a moderate box office hit with $333 million worldwide but earned negative reviews from critics. Chiklis recently tod Collider that critics got it wrong.
“They really maligned our films, and they were very underrated considering… they were very loved by the audience,” Chiklis said. “It was one of those cases where critics weren’t great to those films, but the audience was, and that still remains.”
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Watch Columbus’ full interview on the “Fade to Black” podcast in the video below.
From Variety US