Josh Trank Quits Social Media After Fight With Trolls

Fantastic Four and Capone director Josh Trank has quit social media after clashing with trolls. Trank had been active on social media and while promoting Capone opened up quite a bit about the making of the failed Fantastic Four reboot, even going so far as to share a “final word” on the film. On Instagram, however, people opted to troll and harass the director with a slew of negative comments which Trank responded to. When Trank in turn received flack for his pushback, the director left social media altogether.

On Twitter, one user shared screenshots of Trank’s pushback against trolls in both comments as well as in a post in which the director suggested that trolls “accomplish something interesting w/ your lives” as opposed to continue to harass people online. However, while some seemed to celebrate that they’d managed to run Trank of social media, that had a bit of pushback as well. Other users started to call people out for their relentless bullying of Trank for leading to this point, with some even noting that the director has been taking flack for over five years at this point while others noted that someone can only take so much harassment until they snap.

The idea that Trank was being harassed or was experiencing backlash to negative impact on the director is unfortunately something that’s not new, as some on Twitter have noted. Earlier this year, Trank revealed that he actually slept with a gun under his pillow due to backlash over the casting of Michael B. Jordan as the Human Torch in Fantastic Four. Even before the film came out, that decision alone led to a lot of backlash and even some death threats against the director, who had been instrumental in the casting choice.

“I was getting threats on IMDb message boards saying they were going to shoot me,” Trank said. Trank then revealed that he kept a .38 Special loaded on his nightstand just in case.

“I was so f****** paranoid during that shoot,” Trank said. “If someone came into my house, I would have ended their fucking life. When you’re in a head space where people want to get you, you think, ‘I’m going to defend myself.’”

And Trank is far from the first to be driven off social media due to harassment from trolls. In 2018. Star Wars: The Last Jedi star Kelly Marie Tran deleted her social media accounts after enduring harassment and abuse from trolls online as well.

What do you think about Trank quitting social media? Let us know in the comments below.

Photo by Albert L. Ortega/Getty Images