10 Directors Who Absolutely Hated Their Own Movies

After the runaway success of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, 20th Century Fox decided to reboot the relatively successful franchise of Fantastic Four, which had first been released in 2005 with an origin story, and then followed up with the sequel Fantastic 4: Rise Of The Silver Surfer (2008). Josh Trank was coming off the back of creating the darker indie superhero movie Chronicle (2012), and was tasked with co-writing this now FF film and handed the reins of directing the picture.

Trank showed again that he was keen to portray a darker tone and narrative, and has suggested his vision was heavily influenced by Horror/Sci-Fi master David Cronenberg. Displeased with the direction Trank was heading in, the producers started tinkering with the script while he was filming, completely rewriting the ending and forcing a creative barrier between the director and studio. In post-production, much of the editing control was removed from Trank as the studio perceived the need to fix the movie that fans of the Fantastic Four had such high hopes for.

This left Josh Trank utterly demoralised before publicly criticising 20th Century Fox and his treatment while making the film. As reported by, amongst others, Entertainment Weekly, he tweeted a day before its release saying, “A year ago I had a fantastic version of this. And it would’ve received great reviews. You’ll probably never see it”.

Fantastic Four would fail dismally at the box office, losing tens of millions of dollars and would see the studio shelving their plans for an immediate sequel.