Fantastic Four Director Josh Trank Explains Why He Exited Star Wars

Josh Trank was set to direct the second Star Wars anthology film for Disney, but at the beginning of May we learned that he had unexpectedly exited the project.

Trank has been taking a lot of heat online for some decisions that he made with 20th Century Fox's Fantastic Four reboot. Trank has found the degree of scrutiny to be "very psychologically hard" and that is why he left Star Wars.

"I want to do something original after this because I've been living under public scrutiny, as you've seen, for the last four years of my life," Trank told the LA Times. "And it's not healthy for me right now in my life. I want to do something that's below the radar."

Fantastic Four screenwriter and producer Simon Kinberg, came to Trank's defense saying "vehemence against" Trank has been "particularly cruel."

There have been some wild allegations lobbied at Trank in the past year and Trank did his best to address each. When the subject of his dogs, which supposedly caused over $100k worth of damage to a home he rented while shooting FF in New Orleans, Trank said, "Please – it's crazy and it's not true."

As for the 4Chan rants, which appears to be someone posing as the filmmaker, Trank called it a bizarre hoax. He added, "Everybody wanted to go out there and say, 'Josh has lost his mind.' It's just been an avalanche of things."

Sources for The Hollywood Reporter had their own reasons why Trank is no longer directing Star Wars. They report that Trank didn't voluntarily exit as he suggests, but was given the boot because of erratic behavior on the set of Fantastic Four.

"None of those facts were true – and any of the facts that were true were spun in such a maliciously wrong way," Trank said.