Actor Jamie Bell has outright called his 2015 superhero venture, Fantastic Four (stylized as Fant4stic Four), a disaster. Fant4stic Four was released in 2015 as an intended reboot of the early 2000s Fantastic Four films. Directed by Josh Trank, the film was supposed to tie up with Fox’s other Marvel Comics property, X-Men Series. However, upon release, Fant4stic Four was met with a highly negative reception and became a massive box-office flop. The film made merely $167 Million at the box office against a $120 Million budget, effectively ending the studio’s financial stand to release a sequel. The critics weren’t light to the film, which dropped hard to a 9% rating on Rotten Tomatoes.
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In the film, Jamie Bell portrayed Ben Grimm/The Thing, who, following a journey to a parallel dimension, becomes a huge monstrous creature made of rocks. The film also starred Miles Teller as Reed Richards/Mister Fantastic, Kate Mara as Sue Storm/Invisible Woman, Michael B. Jordan as Johnny Storm/Human Torch, and Toby Kebbell as Victor von Doom/Doctor Doom.
Recently, in a chat with Andy Cohen on his show, Radio Andy, Bell briefly mentioned his stint as a superhero and accepted the film’s failure. He said:
When Andy said that given the star cast’s newfound success post the film, the reboot may be worth a rewatch, Bell harshly but truthfully said:
We made a film together, the ill-fated Fant4stic Four reboot, which was famously a disaster. I think it has about a 9% rating on Rotten Tomatoes.
While Cohen’s comment about the star cast’s newfound success was absolutely correct, Bell’s response was also not a wrong one. Fant4stic Four infamously failed to deliver anything close to the team’s comic book counterpart and was nowhere decent enough to have a follow-up.
No, I don’t think [it deserves a second look.] Save your money, save your time.
Fantastic Four: What was the Plan and Where It’s Headed?
Earlier, Fant4stic Four would crossover with the then X-Men franchise, alongside Gambit joining in the league (a project which later got canceled). Fox had its own plans to create a cinematic universe centered around the Marvel characters it owned at the time, but the film’s failure resulted in a massive loss for the studio and wrecked all of those plans.
Director Josh Trank, however, has always iterated that his film was heavily changed by the studio’s interference and that though he takes responsibility for his bad decisions, he felt disrespected by being made the only guy to take the fall for the film’s bad reception.
Now, after Disney’s acquisition of Fox Studios, the character rights are reverted to Marvel Studios, which also is a Disney subsidiary. Owing to that, Marvel, in 2020, announced that it has begun developing a Fantastic Four film set in the MCU. The film will be helmed by MCU’s Spider-Man Trilogy director Jon Watts and will release in 2023 as part of Phase Four of the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
It’s disappointing what happened with Fant4stic Four, an adaptation of a fan-favorite comic book series, but Bell, with the rest of the cast, has definitely outgrown that failure, moving ahead with several successful projects over the years.
