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”.
Speaking with Collider, Trank revealed that the movie is a modern retelling of the quartet's origins story, and is heavily influenced by the works of David Cronenberg.
“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.
