Josh Trank describes The Fantastic Four as hard sci-fi

Things have been pretty quiet on the Fantastic Four front since it started shooting last year, but director Josh Trank has finally spoken out about the comic-book reboot, branding it “hard sci-fi”.

“The science fiction of it is a big thing that sets it apart from most of the other superhero genre films,” Trank says. “I’m a huge David Cronenberg fan, and I always viewed Fantastic Four and the kind of weirdness that happens to these characters and how they’re transformed to really fall in line more with a Cronenberg-ian science fiction tale of something horrible happening to your body and [it] transforming out of control.

“The potential for a hard sci-fi take on that material makes me really excited... Superhero movies have become a genre unto themselves and I didn’t really grow up on superhero movies. I grew up on genre movies before superhero was a genre... I want it to feel like it’s its own thing.”

Adds producer Simon Kinberg: “One thing that’s unique to it is that it’s always been about a family. Most comic book superhero movies are about a superhero protagonist or a superhero group. But they’re ever really exploring what it is to be family.”

The Fantastic Four stars Michael B. Jordan, Miles Teller, Kate Mara and Jamie Bell as the titular superheroes, with Toby Kebbell as villain Dr Doom.

It opens in the UK on 6 August 2015.

Josh Winning has worn a lot of hats over the years. Contributing Editor at Total Film, writer for SFX, and senior film writer at the Radio Times. Josh has also penned a novel about mysteries and monsters, is the co-host of a movie podcast, and has a library of pretty phenomenal stories from visiting some of the biggest TV and film sets in the world. He would also like you to know that he "lives for cat videos..." Don't we all, Josh. Don't we all.