By Kim Masters

Days before Fantastic Four opened, director Josh Trank sent an email to some members of the cast and crew to say he was proud of the film, which, he wrote, was “better than 99 percent of the comic-book movies ever made.”

“I don’t think so,” responded one cast member.

Maybe if Trank had left it at that, Hollywood insiders and fan websites could have played their own parlor games as to who was at fault for the film’s colossal failure and Fantastic Four would have faded into the history books as did John Carter and other bombs before it. (The $122 million-budgeted film opened to just $25.7 million in the U.S. and $34 million abroad, far below even the most cautious predictions.)

But Trank, 31, could not resist tweeting on Aug. 6, as the movie was hitting theaters, that he had made “a fantastic version” of the film that audiences would “probably never see.” Though Trank quickly deleted the tweet, his public disavowal of the film at such a key moment enraged 20th Century Fox executives and stirred a pot that had begun to bubble when the director was dropped by Lucasfilm from a Star Wars standalone film at the end of April, prompting THR to report that one of the causes was his erratic behavior on Fantastic Four. Now, insiders on the film say the situation was worse than previously revealed, and Trank has enlisted pit-bull lawyer Marty Singer to advocate on his behalf. And so the game of blame has gotten underway.

Related: ‘Fantastic Four’ Could Lead to $60 Million Write-Off for Fox

Fantastic Four is not the only big studio film to go flying off the rails, ostensibly because a director is in over his head. Sometimes a studio can salvage the project, as Paramount did when it shut down World War Z amid crew complaints about director Marc Forster and commissioned a rewrite of the third act. The film went on to gross $540 million worldwide.

Watch the ‘Fantastic Four’ cast reimagine the film as a sitcom below:

Universal intervened to save the original The Bourne Identity when director Doug Liman seemed unable to pull that film together. It launched a franchise but producer Frank Marshall — brought in to rescue the movie — said later that he had taken unprecedented measures to get the movie done. “I’ve always had a respect for the line between a producer and a director,” Marshall told me in 2005. “And I had to step over that line into something that I feel is the director’s responsibility.”

Liman moved on to his next project, Mr. & Mrs. Smith with Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie, only to run into similar problems. Akiva Goldsman, who wrote and was a producer on that film, called him “a madman,” and Liman filed a grievance with the Directors Guild saying his prerogatives as director had been compromised. But the film grossed $478 million worldwide, and Liman’s reputation suffered no serious damage.

In Trank’s case, multiple sources associated with the project say the director did not produce material that would have opened the way to a salvageable film. And by several accounts, he resisted help. “He holed up in a tent and cut himself off from everybody,” says one high-level source. And literally there was a tent on the Louisiana set. A crew member says: “He built a black tent around his monitor. He was extremely withdrawn.” Between set-ups, this person adds, “he would go to his trailer and he wouldn’t interact with anybody.”

Related: 'Fantastic Four' Film Review

Sources say Fox believed in what one executive calls a “grounded, gritty version of Fantastic Four that was almost the opposite of previous versions” — and initially thought Trank could deliver that. Several sources say Fox stood by Trank as he pushed a gloomy tone on young stars Miles Teller, Michael B. Jordan, Kate Mara and Jamie Bell. “During takes, he would be telling [cast members] when to blink and when to breathe,” one person says. “He kept pushing them to make the performance as flat as possible.”

Watch the ‘Fantastic Four’ cast imagine their powers being given to their other well-known characters below:

There were worrying personal issues as well. As THR reported in May, Trank and his dogs allegedly caused more than $100,000 worth of damage to a rented house in Baton Rouge that he and his wife occupied while the film was shooting there. Sources say now that after landlord Martin Padial moved to evict Trank, photographs of the landlord’s family that were in the house were defaced. Padial made a complaint to the local sheriff’s department and filed a civil suit in Louisiana that is sealed. Padial’s attorney, Michael Bienvenu, declined to comment on the matter. The sheriff’s department says the case was “closed as a civil matter between landlord and tenant.”

