Josh Trank Tweets ‘Fantastic Four’ Frustration, Deletes Soon After

We’ve all heard in the past about studios interfering with directors on the direction of a film. With most superhero films being in a shared universe, these directors are pressured into being a part of something they don’t really want to be a part of. Alan Taylor expressed his frustrations while filming Thor: The Dark World. Joss Whedon didn’t get to add any of the characters he wanted to in Avengers: Age of Ultron. Edgar Wright directing Ant-Man didn’t work out. But this doesn’t apply just to films from Marvel Studios.

With Josh Trank‘s reimagining of Fantastic Four out in theaters, the film is getting hit with wave after wave of negative reviews, and as of this post has a 10% on the Rotten Tomatoes Tomatometer. Not entirely unexpected given the harsh criticism the film received from the first trailer and the behind-the-scenes allegations. So far everything points towards Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation taking the top spot at the box office this weekend, which is disappointing news to Fox and everyone else who worked on Fantastic Four.

While there will be plenty of finger pointing when the expected disappointing numbers come out, Trank felt that it was necessary to clear the air by doing some major backpedaling on his own movie. And then he proceeded to be muzzled. More on the story below.

Now it’s important to note that Trank posted his own frustrations at not being able to bring his vision for Fantastic Four to life on Twitter. After the tweet was posted Thursday night, it was retweeted and favorited approximately 200 times. Moments later, the tweet was taken down. But as we all know, when you post things on the internet, they don’t die that easily.

Here is a screenshot of what Trank said:

That’s Trank throwing all the blame at 20th Century Fox for subverting his vision of the Fantastic Four reboot. As aforementioned, studio interference isn’t something that is new, and directors have expressed their frustrations about it publicly. With all the negative attention the film is getting, in hindsight, it may have been better if the studio had trusted Trank, or maybe it would have been better if Trank stood up to the man, or maybe it was something else entirely.

Exactly how much was changed between a year ago and now is unclear. Most reviews say that 1/3 to 2/3s of the film are actually pretty good, with the final act being a horrible movie going experience. Our very own Adam Frazier says the reboot was a marginal improvement over the 2005 and 2007 films.

So it is possible that Trank’s version may actually be better than what the studio wanted. Though we may never know. And based on the tweet, don’t expect a director’s cut to hit store shelves when the Blu-ray/DVD is released.