The Fantastic Four movie that never saw the light of day: “We should not release it”
After a decade away from the big screen, the Fantastic Four are back. The Fantastic Four: First Steps marks the first appearance of the Marvel superhero team since Josh Trank’s cursed Fan4stic in 2015. With an all-star cast including Pedro Pascal and Vanessa Kirby, the possibility of a first look at Robert Downey Jr.’s Doctor Doom, and the backing of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, there is every chance this could be the unit’s biggest triumph to date.
It hasn’t always been smooth sailing for the so-called ‘First Family’. Despite being one of Marvel’s biggest hits, the Four have never managed to make much of an impact in the movie world. As well as the aforementioned Fant4stic, which was so bad it landed Trank in director’s jail, there are the two movies directed by Tim Story from the ’00s. These movies performed well at the box office, but failed to set critics’ hearts alight. Then, there’s the fascinating case of the first attempt to bring the characters to the big screen.
In 1986, an ambitious young producer named Bernd Eichinger acquired the film rights to the team from Stan Lee himself. This was a time when any superhero not named Superman didn’t turn heads at the box office, so Eichinger probably thought he could land the Four super cheap and make a decent return by optioning them to a big studio. Unfortunately, nobody was interested. With a deadline of December 31st 1992, set by Marvel, Eichinger decided to do things his own way and call in help from one of the most important men in Hollywood history.
The legendary Roger Corman was an expert on cheap moviemaking, so Eichinger brought him on as a producer. With a budget of around $1million, The Fantastic Four went into production just three days before he would have lost the rights. Alex Hyde-White, Rebecca Staab, Jay Underwood, and Michael Bailey Smith were cast as the titular heroes, whilst Joseph Culp played Doom. Filming was completed in around a month, and the movie was set to premiere in January of 1994, but fate had other ideas.
Midway through their press tour, which they had funded themselves, the actors were told to stop talking about The Fantastic Four. Director Oleg Sassone was informed that the movie would never be released and, just like that, the project was dead. So, what happened?
In an article by Robert Ito from the March 2005 edition of Los Angeles magazine, several of the key players give their side of the story. Stan Lee claims that the film was “never supposed to be shown to anyone,” and that it was only made to stop the rights from reverting back to him. Both Eichinger and Corman dispute this claim, saying that it was future head of Marvel Studios Avi Arad who intervened at the last second. “He really didn’t like the idea that a small movie was coming out and maybe ruining the franchise,” said Eichinger. “He says to me that he wants to give me back the money that we spent on the movie and that we should not release it.”
Thankfully, copies of the finished film survived and began circulating amongst diehard comic book fans. The full movie is available all over the Internet, so you can see for yourself what might have been. Just who was responsible for the original curtailing of The Fantastic Four remains a mystery, but the story behind its creation is just as fascinating as any tale from the pages of a comic book.
