Superhero properties are the big ticket these days. From the actors to the crew, if you can get involved in a franchise it can keep you employed for a long time. Peyton Reed, as the director of Ant-Man now has a spot in making the Marvel Cinematic Universe come to life. This is his second bite at the apple however. He once had another shot at making a superhero movie, that he’s probably glad he walked away from.
Speaking with Yahoo Movies Reed talks about the time he was attached to direct the 2005 Fantastic Four movie. Yeah, that one. His reasons for eventually leaving the project make a lot of sense, and also shed a bit of light on exactly where the film’s tone came from:
Fox at that time had a very specific idea; they wanted to pitch it much younger than I wanted to and I always felt like they were treating those characters like b-level characters. I never felt like they understood the real strength of that property.
Reed’s description is pretty much exactly the movie we saw in 2005 which means the studio eventually got the movie they were looking for. It was never the film that fans or critics were looking for however. While the movie was successful enough to spawn one sequel it was a campy superhero movie that looked out of place among the success stories of Spider-Man and X-Men . There’s little doubt that the same studio that made the grittier X-Men movies saw Fantastic Four as a B-level characters as Reed says. It’s unfortunate, as Reed is obviously a big fan of the Fantastic Four, calling them the "crown jewel of Marvel." As the team that launched Marvel into the superhero business that’s not too far off the mark.
Reed says he is looking forward to Josh Trank’s Fantastic Four reboot next month. He says he doesn’t have any inside information about it, but as a big fan of Chronicle he is excited for it. Reed would like somebody to make a good movie about the Fantastic Four. He’d like to see it as much as the rest of us. Trank’s film is one of the more curious creatures to come out of Hollywood at the moment. Nobody is really sure what to make of it, or if it will be any good, though it is certainly headed in a different direction than the movie Reed decided to walk away from.
While we probably would have loved to have seen Reed’s version of Fantastic Four we’re pretty happy with his Ant-Man effort. It’s nice to see the Marvel fan finally get a chance to make his Marvel movie.
