In recent years, with a multitude of satisfying portrayals of Marvel characters in movies and television shows, one might easily forget the critical and box office wreck of 2015's Fantastic Four was. Reports of drama during production last-minute reshoots plagued the film during editing, and director Josh Trank's maintained that he had made "a fantastic version" that would never be seen. The movie was outright rejected by audiences. It earned one of the lowest box office openings for a Marvel- based film, and received overwhelmingly negative reviews. Fantastic Four was unnecessarily gloomy for a superhero film and left it's talent including Black Panther's Michael B. Jordan, to play uninteresting one-dimensional characters. Three years later, one of its writers, Jeremy Slater has made a little apology about Fox's big flop on Twitter. In his words:
And when I finally got my foot in the door, I only had three dream projects on my bucket list. One was Marvel (umm...sorry about that one, guys), one was Star Wars, and the third, of course, was Stephen King.
Now that the dust has settled and there have been a ton of Marvel movies, this recent tweet shows that now Jeremy Slater can laugh about the whole situation. He does share the blame with collaborators Simon Kinsberg, Josh Trank and 20th Fox, whose future is a mystery due to the pending Disney / Fox deal. As the movie tanked, the Marvel comic book went down with it, as the comic series was cancelled in 2014. But the Fantastic Four will soon see a comeback with Marvel comics, as a new book was announced in recent months. There's also the possibility of the Fantastic Four being reincarnated into the MCU as well.
Jeremy Slater made the comment amid an announcement of a new project he has been working on that is close to his heart. Starting the tweet thread with a picture of an 80s edition of the Stephen King novel, "The Tommyknockers", he shared that it was the first book he ever bought with his own money when he was just 10 years old. He then revealed that he is a part of the team creating the upcoming Tommyknockersfilm, with the novel adaptation set to be directed by The Conjuring director James Wan and with It producer Roy Lee also onboard.
In Jeremy Slater's entertainment career, he has primarily worked with the horror genre, most notably as the creator of The Exorcist television show, which was recently cancelled by Fox after two seasons. He also wrote the Netflix remake of manga Death Note and The Lazarus Effect, although both films didn't faire too well with audiences overall. With The Tommyknockers being a childhood favorite of Jeremy Slater's and having strong collaborators to work with, we're still rooting for the writer to have a successful dream project that will cast Fantastic Four further into the shadows.
