Simon Kinberg Says Fantastic Four Is Still Big Part Of Fox’s Plan, Explains What Went Wrong

If you’re one of those fans who’s hoping to see Fantastic Four‘s rights revert to Marvel, don’t hold your breath just yet.

During a podcast interview in support of X-Men: Apocalypse,

“I don’t think that there is, in any movie that doesn’t work, a single decision that is the reason the movie doesn’t work,” Kinberg told Happy Sad Confused. “I think there were many, many decisions we made along the way that led to a movie that people didn’t like and a movie that I would do differently next time. I think the biggest takeaway for me — and there were many takeaways, and this could be a whole other segment — is that the tone of the movie, while interesting, ran counter to the DNA of the source material. The source material of Fantastic Four is bright, optimistic, poppy in tone. There’s sort of a plucky spirit to those characters and we made a darker sort of body horror version of Fantastic Four, which again, even as I say it now, sounds really interesting and cerebrally ambitious…but it’s Fantastic Four. So it’s a lesson that I would learn not just for Fantastic Four but for any movie going forward is to be true to the material.”

You can hear his full interview below.

“The truth is, the fans of the comic are fans for a reason,” Kinberg added. “They love the fundamental voice and tone of the source material. And so if you’re adapting the Bible, don’t make it funny.”

Kinberg doesn’t believe that there’s a significantly better movie in the raw material, regardless of director Josh Tranks claims to the contrary, but acknowledges “I’m too close and too inside of the process of making that movie to really have perspective on it, to be honest.”

He added that Fantastic Four is “a big part of the plan going forward,” and that he would “love to keep making movies with that cast.”