Fantastic Four 2

The Fantastic Four movie stunk. Perhaps you heard about it. Fox attempted to reboot Marvel’s First Family with a younger cast, a darker tone, and a buzzy young director (Chronicle’s Josh Trank). The finished product was a baffling, ugly mess. It made just $167 million worldwide, way less than either of the Fantastic Four movies that had come before it, earned some of the worst reviews of 2015, and won (“won”) three Razzie Awards, including Worst Director for Trank and Worst Picture.

We can all agree that Fantastic Four was far from great, a CG-saturated mess with a few good character moments eclipsed by all those rumors about Josh Trank. And while Fox has taken the sequel off the table (for now), there’s at least one person who’d be down to return for Fantastic Four 2: Michael B. Jordan.

Flame off? After Fantastic Four’s hugely disappointing opening earlier this year, Fox initially claimed they were still moving ahead with a sequel, keeping the planned June 9, 2017 release date. But, after a closer look at the situation and perhaps a good dose of common sense, Fox has removed Fantastic Four 2 from their release schedule.

Before Fantastic Four opened to dismal box office and even more dismal reviews, 20th Century Fox attempted to combat the bad buzz surrounding the film by greenlighting a sequel. It was a vote of confidence – they were prepared to stick with this cast moving forward. Then everyone saw the final trainwreck and the internet proceeded to pick over the film’s fascinating corpse in a desperate attempt to figure out what happened with this production. We all assumed that announced sequel was dead and buried. We were wrong.

As of this writing, Josh Trank’s Fantastic Four has made $25.6 million. Improbably, that’s less than half of either of the previous big-budget Fantastic Four movies, which are widely disliked by comics fan and cinephiles alike. There’s a chance Trank’s FF could wind up grossing less in theaters than Blade: Trinity, or even Trank’s own surprise debut hit, Chronicle (which cost about a tenth of his follow-up). In Hollywood parlance, those are ungood numbers. In most cases, they would almost mean certain doom (har dee har har) for any chance of a sequel.

Take this rumor with a big heap of salt, but it’s one that doesn’t seem implausible: after helping to revitalize the X-Men franchise he started with 20th Century Fox, Bryan Singer is apparently their choice to direct the Fantastic Four sequel. This would lend credence to recent rumors that Fox is looking to set up an X-Men and Fantastic Four crossover film down the line.

Disney continues to engage other major studio releases in a game of chicken that it will always win. With every new Marvel or Star Wars film scheduled for release, there comes the subsequent announcement that another major film has been pushed back — no one wants to compete with these heavyweights. Thanks to yesterday’s major Star Wars announcement regarding their first standalone film, Rogue One, and the new release date for Episode VIII, Fox has pushed the release date of Fantastic Four 2 back, as expected.

Twentieth Century Fox must be happy with 'Fantastic Four,' if the studio is already planning 'Fantastic Four 2,' right? A rumor circulated recently claiming that Fox was looking to completely start over on the rebooted superhero film with an entirely new cast and crew, though we quickly debunked that one. To further prove how serious they are about their upcoming slate of Marvel movies, the studio