The response to the Fantastic Four reboot hasn’t been exactly what 20th Century Fox were expecting. Well I say that, but if Fox were aiming for an incoherent jumbled mess then it shuld be high-fives all round. Reviews have ranged from average to scathingly brutal and the opening weekend at the box office is proving be far from fantastic. In fact, the reboot is on course for a $28 million launch, well bellow the $56 million opening of the 2005 attempt and the $58 million debut of its sequel.

Director Josh Trank took to Twitter and sparked a wild debate with his comments that confirm the final cut of the movie was far from what he imagined.

“A year ago I had a fantastic version of this. And it would’ve received great reviews. You’ll probably never see it. That’s reality though.”

The tweet was quickly deleted, but the damage was already done, I say damage in the sense that a negative comment from the director on opening weekend is not what the studio executives want to hear. There have been numerous reports that all was not well on the set of Fantastic Four, allegedly Trank’s behaviour on set was ‘erratic’ and ‘isolated’. It was this ‘behaviour’ that apparently caused him to exit the Star Wars Anthology project he was working on.

Given the wealth of negativity towards the new Fantastic Four, I’ll bet those Fox executives wish they left Trank’s version alone. Then again, perhaps Trank’s finished cut was even more of a mess and the released version is all that could be salvaged. Until the facts come out everything is speculation, so focusing on the stone cold fact that the movie has under-performed in a big way.

We will have to see what kind of story the final worldwide box office tells, but the odds of a sequel are starting to looked fantastically small. Could a deal be struck with Fox and Marvel to bring the Fantastic Four into the MCU?