Director Chris Columbus Says He Was Fired From 2005’s FANTASTIC FOUR After Criticizing Concept Art

Chris Columbus has been behind some of the biggest blockbusters of all time, from Mrs. Doubtfire and Home Alone to the first two Harry Potter movies. But, even with that track record, he found himself unexpectedly ousted from 20th Century Fox’s 2005 Fantastic Four film.

Although Columbus is credited as an executive producer on the superhero movie, he says that credit is misleading. Columbus said during a recent interview on the Fade to Black podcast:

“We were in a weird situation. 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.”

At the time, Columbus was eager to make his mark on the superhero genre. He had already written a Daredevil script and had been interested in directing Spider-Man before Sam Raimi took the reins. Still, being fired from Fantastic Four left a mark. “It probably soured me a little” on comic book movies, he admitted.

Looking back now, Columbus has no regrets about stepping away from superhero projects.

“Over the years people have done it so well that I personally lost interest in making a superhero movie. 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.”

This wasn’t the only clash Columbus had with Fox. In a 2013 interview with Blackfilm.com, he recalled a disagreement over how to bring Ben Grimm/The Thing to the big screen.

He argued for a fully CGI version of the character, saying you could “really never get the size of Ben Grimm if he’s not CGI or something.”

Ultimately, Fantastic Four was directed by Tim Story and starred Ioan Gruffudd, Jessica Alba, Chris Evans, and Michael Chiklis. The film pulled in $333 million worldwide, but critics were harsh.

Despite that, Chiklis recently defended the film, saying: “They really maligned our films, and they were very underrated considering… they were very loved by the audience. It was one of those cases where critics weren’t great to those films, but the audience was, and that still remains.”

Columbus may have been fired from Fantastic Four, but the franchise still left its mark on him, if only as a reminder that sometimes having “too much of an opinion” in Hollywood can cost you a directing gig.