Chronicle Director Josh Trank Favourite To Helm Fantastic Four Remake

Variety reports that Josh Trank, whose debut feature film Chronicle opens February 3rd, is being eyed by 20th Century Fox to direct the big budget Fantastic Four remake they have been developing for the past few years. Michael Green, one of the scribes responsible for this past summer's Green Lantern (oh dear) is writing the script. 26-year-old Trank is mostly an unknown entity to us but he is better known by Fox where his low-budget, found-footage superhero film has got them all giddy internally. They believe they have a big Cloverfield style winner on their hands and certainly the Chronicle trailer has got people talking. I have to say as fun as it looks, personally nothing I've seen from the young man would scream to me that he should get a property like Fantastic Four. Not when there are directors as talented and experienced as Alex Proyas (I Robot, Dark City) on this planet who could do something wonderful with the property. But for Fox he will come cheap and won't cause any fuss because he will just be happy to be there. His hiring seems dependent on how Chronicle performs critically and at the box office as no decision will be made until the end of next month but we do know Fox need to hire somebody soon. As we have mentioned several times before, time is against 20th Century Fox on this reboot. The fact is the studio are legally binded to creatively keep the Fantastic Four franchise moving and churning out films, otherwise they will lose the rights to the characters back to Marvel, who with the backing now of Walt Disney's lawyers are just waiting for the moment to strike to reclaim their property and likely add them to The Avengers universe they have created. Fox financed and produced two Fantastic Four movies to date, the first in 2005 that earned $154 million domestically and $330 million worldwide on a $100 million budget, starring Ioan Gruffud as Mr. Fantastic, Jessica Alba as The Invisible Woman, Chris Evans as the Human Torch and Michael Chiklis as The Thing. Despite criticised for being a dumbed-down version of the FF property with shoddy direction, Saturday morning cartoon level depth aimed at a really young fanbase and bad castings, the film did enough to secure a quickly produced sequel, Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer (2007). The film cost more money to make ($130 million) but made less money ($131 million domestically, $289 million worldwide) a poor return that killed that series. Both films were directed by Hollywood hack Tim Story. Fox then announced a hiatus for the Fantastic Four franchise before announcing the remake route but it's almost been five years since the last FF movie and those Disney lawyers are sharpening their knives... You can read about my fantasy re-casting of the Fantastic Four universe HERE.