Fox-Gate Versus Trank-Gate: Production Timeline.

PRE-RELEASE (IT JUST GETS WORSE):

- Shortly after the incident, another user from 4Chan claimed that the draft leaks were true, and that the January 2014 draft was further revised in March to be less expensive. It continues to suggest that Josh Trank had issues with Twentieth Century Fox and Simon Kinberg. The poster claims that the budget had been increased to add action and humor to the movie to make it more marketable, which came at the cost of the advertising budget. It also notes that Fox executives were disappointed in what they saw in the first rough cut.

- Michael B. Jordan goes to Entertainment Weekly to talk about how he's a martyr of being victimized by racist fanboys and a trendsetter for progressivism, even though he only got the part because he was pals with Josh Trank - not to mention that Marvel Studios has included a number of black characters in their setting already. Bear in mind that, at this point, most people have gotten over the idea behind the race change and are just pissed that he got the gig for nepotistic/cronyistic reasons.

- Fox pulls Fantastic Four (2005) and Fantastic Four: Rise Of The Silver Surfer from digital distributors.

- Michael B. Jordan makes a few statements in an interview that imply the movie is set in the MCU as opposed to being a complete standalone.

- Fox's Hitman: Agent 47 is moved to release two weeks after Fantastic Four, suggesting that Fox is not confident in the movie's performance.

- Several TV Spots start airing. Almost all of them consist of recycled footage from the first two trailers, with a scene of Sue Storm laughing at various "jokes" shown in the footage. Some of the footage is very clearly reversed. Oh, and a Kanye West song is thrown in a couple of the ads for some reason.

- Rumors that Fox is looking to hire Bryan Singer to direct the Fantastic Four sequel appear, followed by him returning to direct the hypothetical X-Men/Fantastic Four crossover. It should be noted that he has gone on record saying that X-Men: Apocalypse will be the last X-Men movie he will direct, making these rumors extremely unlikely.

- The track names for the original soundtrack for the movie are released. The outline of the plot sounds nearly identical to the 2005 movie, with the exceptions of there being a flashback sequence at the beginning and a military battle sequence in the middle. The characters apparently do not gain their superpowers until halfway through the film.

- Josh Trank has an interview explaining that he was both anticipating controversy with his approach and that he didn't handle it well. In a heart-to-heart and totally necessary moment, he reveals that he was a fat kid with man-boobs. (Thanks for putting that mental image into my head. Yuck.) He said that he felt vindictive toward the world as a child, and that he suffered from depression. He also tries to pass off the movie as an "educational" experience to a young-adult audience, with his 31 years of wisdom.

- Josh Trank talks with Kevin Smith on his podcast to promote the film.

- Secondhand testimony from someone who worked on the film states that Matthew Vaughn was in charge of the movie in post-production. The same source stated that the editors of the film were told to ignore what Josh Trank had talked about previously - namely, the darker-and-edgier body horror take on the movie - in favor of standard superhero fare.

- An SDCC panel is held with the cast. Josh Trank actually shows up this time with Simon Kinberg, and says that he sees the movie as a follow-up to Chronicle. Pretty much no new information is revealed, and there is a lack of enthusiasm from the audience. (Interestingly, Toby Kebbell is referred to as playing "Victor Von Doom" instead of "Victor Domashev", possibly implying that the reshoots changed the character after backlash against "Blogger Doom".)

- Josh Trank confirms that the film is not finished as of SDCC.

- Jamie Bell confirms that the movie will not have a mid-credits or post-credits scene.

- Toby Kebbell mentions that he would like to play Doctor Doom and fight the Avengers. His wish comes across as unlikely to happen, considering that Tom Holland had just been re-cast as Peter Parker/Spider-Man in spite of the former actor - Andrew Garfield - being readily available to reprise the role.

- Rumors circulate that there will be a 2020 Avengers/X-Men crossover based on information revealed in the Sony leaks that were revealed at a later time. The Fantastic Four are not mentioned. Publicly, relations between Twentieth Century Fox and Disney/Marvel Studios have not improved.

- Josh Trank confirms that the 3-D conversion was officially cancelled. He claimed that this was for artistic reasons (even though the studio clearly wanted it, and this is bound to diminish money made on ticket sales).

- The final Trailer and a variant are released a few days after SDCC. They are met with the least warm reception out of any footage released for the movie, and is greatly overshadowed by the trailers released for Batman V. Superman: Dawn Of Justice and Suicide Squad, along with footage for other movies revealed at the convention.

- AMC reports that the running time of the film is an hour and forty-five/forty-six minutes. This is much shorter than what Josh Trank said that he expected the final cut of the film to be (two hours and twenty minutes). Later,

- Doctor Doom is revealed to have green glowing skin and a face made out of metal. Some have argued that these effects have made him look less threatening then the trashbag-hobo he was first seen as. Meanwhile, Thing is revealed to have Jamie Bell's unaltered voice, creating a jarring dissonance with his size in mind.

- Josh Trank tweets that he would like to make a Columbo reboot with Mark Ruffalo and Gary Whitta.

- The Star Wars Anthology movie that Josh Trank was working on was delayed to 2020; conversely, the Star Wars Anthology intended for release for 2020 was moved up for a 2018 release date, with Phil Lord and Chris Miller slated to direct.

- More TV Spots air, featuring more dodgy special effects (including obvious greenscreen and scenes that are not completely rendered - a tank completely disappears after a cheap explosion, and a shot of Johnny Storm flying through debris features an odd flight pattern and part of his flames disappearing for a split-second).

- The movie is still considered to be in post-production less than ten days before the movie is first shown commercially in New Zealand. Neither a red-carpet premiere of the film or screenings for critics are announced weeks in advance.

- The movie is officially completed on July 23 - a week before the movie is released in New Zealand. The final running time is an hour and forty-seven minutes, close to the AMC statement.

- Josh Trank removes his Fantastic Four-related avatar from his Twitter.

- Critical screenings are confirmed to take place two days before the movie premieres, with a review embargo set to expire the night before the movie is released. The embargo lift is later rescheduled to take place two nights before the movie is released.

- Various international showings of the movie were delayed to take place after the American premiere to avoid allowing critic and audience reviews from being released before the movie's premiere in its biggest market.

- A clip released on July 30 features Reed, Johnny, Ben, and Victor going to Planet Zero, but Sue is missing, bringing up what appears to be an obvious continuity error. It is later revealed that Sue does not go on the expedition.

- Bryan Singer shills for the movie, saying that it will be important later on - presumably for the crossover that they probably can't (or arguably won't) do at this point.

- Kate Mara says that Susan Storm is adopted from Kosovo instead of being American-born.

- The British Board Of Film Classification officially confirms that the movie's running time is 100 minutes - including credits.

- Toby Kebbell suggests that Doctor Doom could be zig-zagged between the Fantastic Four movies and the MCU itself, namely wanting to have a crossover where he fights Thor. Obviously, this can't happen without Fox or Marvel Studios coming to an explicit agreement.

- Toby Kebbell also explains that Victor's surname is Von Doom and not Domashev, like he previously stated. He also dismisses the rumors that he was an anti-social hacker in spite of inadvertently starting them.

- The cast express interest with using Silver Surfer and Namor in potential sequels. While Silver Surfer is safely at Fox, the rights for Namor are tied between Universal and Marvel Studios, making the Sub-Mariner's inclusion impossible.

- The movie is privately screened at Atlanta, with Kate Mara, Michael B. Jordan, and Jamie Bell present. However, the cast members apparently leave before the film is shown. The three are later seen looking generally unhappy in a photo released on Twitter.

- An extremely-awkward interview is held featuring the three aforementioned actors. The interviewer asks about the how race-change affects the Sue/Johnny dynamic. Then he gets creepy and starts asking about Kate Mara's hair and feet, prompting the interview to abruptly end. Some suspect that the interview was staged as a publicity stunt.

- Twitter responses from the Atlanta screening come out and are positive in vague ways. (It should be noted that the same thing happened with Green Lantern, which was later panned upon release.)

- Bleeding Cool exposes information that Fox officially has plants shilling for the movie. (One of which frequents this very board!)

- Kate Mara claims that she's not even aware if she puts on a different version of the suit at the end of the movie in an interview. She repeats the standard talking points. She notes that she didn't see the movie - again, in spite of attending the premiere and dropping out with the others - and describes the Atlanta crowd as not being a "real" audience. (Food for thought - most of the attendees were black people. Kind of statement with troubling implications there, Kate.)

- Bleeding Cool reports that Fox apparently is internally-divided about the quality of the film, with some thinking that the movie is a complete trainwreck (hence the embargoes) and others thinking that the movie can do well if presented the right way (who posit that a final trailer might help win audiences over). This comes long after the movie has been completely finished.

- The cast answer questions on Twitter, all of which are pretty standard and (suspiciously) none of which bring up any of the aforementioned rumors about the film.

- When Simon Kinberg is asked about the film, the best he can say about it is that the movie "isn't a disaster". (That's really reassuring!)

- When Miles Teller is interviewed about the quality movie and "proving the haters wrong", Teller concedes that he doesn't think the movie is going to be received well, noting that superhero movies aren't usually met with critical acclaim in the 80-90% range on Rotten Tomatoes. (Obviously, he's forgetting about The Dark Knight, The Avengers, and X-Men: Days Of Future Past, among several other films.)

- An eleventh-hour extended Trailer is released, as Bleeding Cool reported. The movie advertised looks to be extremely generic and is devoid of anything that Josh Trank discussed that would make the film unique. It has very little footage that has not already been shown.

- Rotten Tomatoes holds brief interviews with the cast - none of whom look enthused about the movie in the slightest and almost seem ready to bite the bullet.

RELEASE (BOMBS AWAY):

- The review embargo is lifted and the first five reviews come in - four of which are outright scathing. Rotten Tomatoes only has one review listed as being "Fresh", which even then expresses disappointment toward the movie. The reviewer also notes that he saw the movie as being "a harmless and endearingly cartoonish throwback to more simple comic book movie times"... which was blatantly the opposite of what Josh Trank intended with the film.

- Further reviews come in and the movie's RT rating plummets to 7%. It balances out at 8%. Some of the more forgiving reviews dismiss the movie as "average", while many consider it to be among the worst superhero movies ever made.

- Miles Teller is suddenly dropped from La La Land, a movie that would have reunited him with director Damien Chazelle and actor J. K. Simmons. This film may or may not have been a factor in that decision.

- Rumors spread that as many as forty pages of script were rewritten during the shoot.

- After scathing reviews for the film come in, Fox's stock plummets by $6. It stabilizes $3 higher than this a few days later, which is still a $3 hit to their stock overall.

- Josh Trank tweets out a comment stating that his version of the movie was substantially better and that he was disappointed in Fox taking the movie away from him. The tweet is quickly deleted, but the damage is done - it is an admission of guilt that he did not work on the movie in post-production and that someone else did the reshoots. This tweet is later asserted to have cost Fox $10 million on opening weekend.

- Writer Jeremy Slater conversely defends his movie, stating that he enjoyed working on the film regardless of what people think of the final product, and hopes that people who see the movie will enjoy it in some capacity.

- Max Landis, after expressing disdain for Josh Trank previously, came to a certain degree of defense toward him in a series of tweets detailing why tackling Fant4stic would be substantially more difficult than tackling a movie like Chronicle. While most see the responses as constructive criticism, some interpret Landis's replies as saying that Trank should have been more responsible for his film.

- The movie comes out in the USA on August 7.

- Fox issues a statement that Fantastic Four and X-Men take place in parallel universes, implying that they internally don't want to follow up with a crossover (regardless of whether or not they can make one) like they had initially planned.

- Collider releases a video backing up Josh Trank's claims that Fox damaged the film. According to multiple sources, Twentieth Century Fox told Trank to remove three major action sequences from the film that they had agreed on including just before principal photography began. Furthermore, Trank was indeed taken out of the editing room in post-production, and a major special effects worker was swapped out mid-production. The resulting film was not the one that either Trank or Fox had planned on making. They also mentioned that they had wild rumors about the production that they didn't have full confirmation on.

- Entertainment Weekly writes an article vindicating most of the production's rumors.

- Fant4stic's opening weekend numbers come in, stating that the movie made $25,685,737 domestically on the opening weekend and about $34,100,000 internationally. On a budget of $122,000,000 (plus reshoot and advertising costs), the film is officially considered a box office bomb. Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation makes more money on its second weekend than FF does on its first. The movie opened in 3,995 theaters.

- Fox issues a statement expressing disappointment in these numbers, but notes that Fox is still committed to "our Marvel Universe". Said statement does not mention any specific characters, and that along with the "parallel universe" statement from earlier possibly indicates that their Marvel Universe does not include future FF movies.

- Marvel's official website makes no mention of this movie anywhere - not even on a list of films that includes the maligned Howard The Duck.

- Josh Trank removes his Twitter description promoting Fant4stic.

- A Twitter user mentions that after a screening of the film, a survey was handed out. This survey may have been issued by Fox themselves for the purposes of gauging what to do with the franchise, or it may have been issued by CinemaScore to see what the audience thought of the movie.

- The CinemaScore rating comes in at C-, the worst rating for any comic book movie ever released.

- A behind-the-scenes demo reel shows numerous setpieces that were not used in the final movie, including a scene where the team meets at Reed's house, a bumpy landing on Planet Zero, and the team getting into what appears to be this movie's version of the Fantasticar.

- The Hollywood Reporter brings up an estimate stating that the movie could potentially cause Fox to lose as much as $60 million. Furthermore, Fox's fiscal year is $200 million short of their original expectations.

- A HitFix reporter suggests that he hears talk that they're still proceeding with the sequel anyway. Many compare this post-release bravado to Warner Brothers's statements that they were proceeding with Green Lantern 2 in spite of it flopping at the box office (something they never followed up on).

- Miles Teller tweets out "And I thought I was having a bad week." in response to the New York Jets suffering the temporary loss of Geno Smith.

- The Hollywood Reporter drops another nuke on Twentieth Century Fox and Josh Trank with an article further detailing what happened during production.

- Josh Trank sent out an e-mail telling the cast that he thought the final cut of movie was better than 99% of any other superhero movies on the market. (Keep in mind that he later sent out a message stating he disowned the movie shortly after it was released.) A cast member snarkily replied with "I don't think so."

- Josh Trank hired lawyer Marty Singer - who defended Bill Cosby from rape allegations that Cosby is likely guilty of - to assist him on a legal attack against Fox.

- Josh Trank's original material was said to be beyond salvaging.

- Josh Trank himself apparently holed up in a tent or a trailer for a good portion of the filming, where he would issue orders from a monitor.

- Josh Trank encouraged the actors to fit his movie's gloomy tone by explicitly ordering them when to breathe and blink to create very flat performances.

- Landlord Martin Padial found pictures of his family defaced when he came to evict Josh Trank after the damages he had caused to the estate.

- An anonymous Fox employee made a statement about the movie. "[It was] ill-conceived, made for the wrong reasons, and there was no vision behind the property. Say what you will about Marvel, but they have a vision. [Fox] were afraid of losing the rights so they pressed forward and didn't surround [Trank] with help or fire him. They buried their heads in the sand."

- Another employee stated that Fox went forward with the film only because they had no other choice. "How do you ask someone to take over half of a movie shot by someone else? You either hire somebody desperate for work or you [start over], write off pretty much the whole budget and lose the cast."

- During reshoots, Josh Trank was present, but was neutralized by a committee.

- Drew Goddard apparently joined a "dream team" that included Simon Kinberg and Hutch Parker, who all futilely tried to salvage the film.

- The "dream team" apparently actually gave the movie an ending, as Josh Trank did not even film an ending sequence during principal photography.

- Once the "dream team" got involved, the special effects supervisor had apparently been fired from the movie.

And the update is away.

These are more interesting than the movie itself, sadly

I wouldnt doubt it if sites start using this info for their articles OP...this one seems like it copied you a bit;

http://www.denofgeek.com/movies/fantastic-four/36513/fantastic-4-the-body-horror-superhero-film-well-never-see

Of course no one is going to link their source to IMDB...;)

But we know all the work you have done...



Well done.

[deleted]

Excellent work my friend. Keep it going.

Holy crap, dude! Like you, I knew this movie would be a complete failure and am now excited that the rights will eventually go back to Marvel... But *beep* that's the longest post I've ever seen!!! LOL

IT'S A TRAP!!!