Days after both 20th Century Fox and director Josh Trank's unveiled
what will probably end up being one of the most disappointing if not worst movies
of the year, screenwriter Max Landis (Chronicle) released via his Twitter
account a few pages from a script he wrote years prior to the studio's critical
and commercial fiasco.
Now, speaking to The Daily Beast, the candid screenwriter the basic
outline that he pitched to 20th Century Fox as an answer to Marvel's The
Avengers.
"My Fantastic
Four was an on-the-run movie. It begins with their origin, which is an illegal
Branson-esque space launch where they want to go see this thing. They become
the biggest celebrities in the world, except then they wreck and they get these
horrible powers. The government is hunting them and they split up, and you
really get into the dynamics of these people as they’re learning to control
their powers. So the origin takes place in the first two minutes and then you
learn it’s a character movie. Avengers had
just come out, and I wanted to present Fox’s superhero team so that any one of
them could beat all of the
Avengers, and any one of them could be the villain of an Avengers movie.
Reed Richards is indestructible. Sue Storm can control light. Johnny Storm can
burn hotter than the sun. The Thing is impossibly strong, and you can’t hurt
him no matter what you do. I thought, what a cool idea, that these four friends
have accidentally become gods. I had Doctor
Doom as a good guy, one of Reed’s college friends, and my whole movie he’s
trying to find and help them but it wasn’t clear if he was good or bad—until
the finale of the movie when you realize his connection to Reed, and that
they’re best friends. The audience who knows Doctor Doom thinks he’s going to
turn bad, but the movie ends with him saving them. And in the sequel he’s
probably good, too. You know, you Sam Raimi-Spider-Man it—at
the end of the sequel he gets all fucked up and shows up in the Doctor Doom
armor. But then in the third movie he’s like, ‘What have you done to me?’"
The movie obviously
never got made, but the screenwriter was excited with the idea that he wrote
fifty pages of the script regardless.
We will never know
what would have happened had the studio opted to go with this clearly different
version, but since both stories are so different from one another I think it's
clear that they were really keen on a more "dark and gritty" approach
to the superhero team.
Source - The Daily Beast
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