The Original Plan For 2015's FANTASTIC FOUR Was Infinitely Better Than The Actual Film

If you've seen Josh Trank's Fantastic Four, you're well aware the movie is spectacularly awful. It wasn't always that way though, as its initial screenwriter Jeremy Slater says the initial plan was much better! In an interview with Screencrush, Slater explains how the original script for the film called for Mole Man, 60 ft monsters, and an all-out war in Latveria:

"In addition to Annihilus and the Negative Zone, we had Doctor Doom declaring war against the civilized world, the Mole Man unleashing a 60 foot genetically-engineered monster in downtown Manhattan, a commando raid on the Baxter Foundation, a Saving Private Ryan-style finale pitting our heroes against an army of Doombots in war-torn Latveria, and a post-credit teaser featuring Galactus and the Silver Surfer destroying an entire planet. We had monsters and aliens and Fantasticars and a cute spherical H.E.R.B.I.E. robot that was basically BB-8 two years before BB-8 ever existed. And if you think all of that sounds great...well, yeah, we did, too. The problem was, it would have also been massively, MASSIVELY expensive."

You would've needed an Avengers-type budget for a film like that, and let's be honest, who would've green-lit that after the earlier Fantastic Four movies? I'm sure even the most avid fans of the series would've been suspect of a film with that much budget behind it.

It's easy to say "wow that's awesome, Josh Trank is an idiot," but one of the challenges of being a screenwriter is developing a usable script that's realistic to the film's budget. This script was nothing more than a pipedream, even if the final product was pretty awful...and man, was it awful.