Matthew Vaughn Interested in Fixing His Fantastic Four “Mistake”

Despite what the incomparable Stan “The Man” Lee recently said about Marvel eventually getting “the rights back to all our characters,” it’s unlikely that Fox will be letting go of the Marvel characters it controls any time soon. Fox owns the rights to the X-Men, which has generated nearly $5 billion worldwide over 10 films, and the Fantastic Four, with a less-auspicious $787 million worldwide over 3 films, the latest of which lost a mountain of money when marketing costs are factored into the production budget.

While much of the blame for 2015’s Fantastic Four has been dumped on director Josh Trank and his paranoid and infantile behavior, blame is owed to Vaughn, as well. The veteran director of such superhero movies as Kick-Ass, X-Men: First Class, and the Kingsman movies was a producer on the movie and he signed off on the film, which he now regrets. In a recent interview with Cinemablend, Vaughn called the movie a “mistake.”

I wouldn’t mind maybe making a ‘Fantastic Four’ film to apologize to everyone out there that maybe it didn’t go very well for them. It’s brilliant. One of my favorites is the ‘Fantastic Four,’ so maybe one day I’ll try and rectify the mistake.

While Trank’s grim-and-gritty version of Marvel’s first family was bad, the previous two movies weren’t much better, with bad CGI, goofy stories and hokey humor. The Fantastic Four is unique in that its a family of heroes who got their powers by flying an experimental craft into outer space. Imagine a more likeable Elon Musk, his girlfriend, her brother and his best friend going for a joy ride in a Falcon 9 and coming back grotesquely transformed. Only by straddling the line between sentimental and high-octane the way Brad Bird‘s The Incredibles (our favorite “Fantastic Four” movie) did will the Fantastic Four find a place in cinemas alongside other Marvel heroes.