“Mrs. Doubtfire,” “Adventures in Babysitting” and “Home Alone” director Chris Columbus is still out on the publicity circuit this week promoting his upcoming “The Thursday Murder Club” movie for Netflix.
While several of his comments about “Harry Potter” have made headlines in recent days, another film has come up that you may not have heard his name linked to – the 2005 film adaptation of Marvel’s “Fantastic Four”.
Columbus is listed as an executive producer on that film and its sequel, 2007’s “Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer,” but according to the man himself he had no real involvement in the final films.
Speaking with the Fade To Black podcast, he revealed he was linked to the film but was abruptly fired one day. The reason? He was too opinionated:
“We were in a weird situation. On the first ‘Fantastic Four,’ I had worked on a script. There were a lot of writers involved. They were about to make a movie and I was producing it.
I met with the director and had some ideas. I basically said, ‘Some of this conceptual art should feel more like Jack Kirby, the creator of the Fantastic Four, and should feel more like the Silver Age of Marvel.’
I left that meeting and on the way back from my house I got a call from the head of 20th Century Fox saying I was fired and had too much of an opinion.”
That, combined with his writing a “Daredevil” script that didn’t eventuate and circling “Spider-Man” before Sam Raimi nabbed it, meant Columbus finds himself having ‘soured a little’ on the genre. Theses days he has no interest in helming a comic book movie:
“Over the years people have done it so well that I personally lost interest in making a superhero movie. It started a little bit with ‘Spider-Man 2.’ When I saw what Sam Raimi did with that I thought it was a perfect superhero movie. Certainly Matt Reeves’ ‘The Batman’ with Robert Pattinson was a brilliant film, too. I realized I don’t have a desire to make those movies anymore because people are doing them better than I ever could at this point in my career.”
Tim Story directed 2005’s “Fantastic Four” which was a moderate box office hit with $333 million worldwide despite negative reviews.
