Chris Columbus has directed some of the most enduring blockbusters of all time, from \u201cMrs. Doubtfire\u201d and the \u201cHome Alone\u201d films to the first two \u201cHarry Potter\u201d movies. But even with those movies under his belt, Columbus still found himself getting booted from 20th Century Fox\u2019s original \u201cFantastic Four\u201d movie. The director is credited as an executive producer on the movie \u201cbut had nothing to do with it,\u201d he recently told the \u201cFade to Black\u201d podcast.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe were in a weird situation,\u201d Columbus said. \u201cOn the first \u2018Fantastic Four,\u2019 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, \u2018Some 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.\u2019 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.\u201d<\/p>\n
More from Variety<\/strong><\/p>\n Columbus was in a phase of his career where we he was interested in superhero movies. He had circled \u201cSpider-Man\u201d before Sam Raimi took on the property, and he had also written a \u201cDaredevil\u201d script. But getting fired from \u201cFantastic Four\u201d was a blow and \u201cprobably soured me a little\u201d from the genre, he said. Columbus has no interest in helming a comic book these days.<\/p>\n \u201cOver the years people have done it so well that I personally lost interest in making a superhero movie,\u201d he said. \u201cIt started a little bit with \u2018Spider-Man 2.\u2019 When I saw what Sam Raimi did with that I thought it was a perfect superhero movie. Certainly Matt Reeves\u2019 \u2018The Batman\u2019 with Robert Pattinson was a brilliant film, too. I realized I don\u2019t have a desire to make those movies anymore because people are doing them better than I ever could at this point in my career.\u201d<\/p>\n In an interview with Blackfilm.com<\/a> 10 years ago, Columbus said he also was at odds with the studio over bringing Ben Grimm\/The Thing to life on the big screen. He pushed for a \u201cFantastic Four\u201d movie that utilized visual effects to bring The Thing to life, arguing you could \u201creally never get the size of Ben Grimm if he\u2019s not CGI or something.\u201d<\/p>\n Tim Story directed 2005\u2019s \u201cFantastic Four,\u201d which featured Ioan Gruffudd as Reed Richards, Jessica Alba as Sue Storm, Chris Evans as Johnny Storm and Michael Chiklis as Ben Grimm. The film was a moderate box office hit with $333 million worldwide but earned negative reviews from critics. Chiklis recently tod Collider<\/a> that critics got it wrong.<\/p>\n \u201cThey really maligned our films, and they were very underrated considering\u2026 they were very loved by the audience,\u201d Chiklis said. \u201cIt was one of those cases where critics weren\u2019t great to those films, but the audience was, and that still remains.\u201d<\/p>\n Watch Columbus\u2019 full interview on the \u201cFade to Black\u201d podcast in the video below.<\/p>\n Best of Variety<\/strong><\/p>\n Sign up for Variety’s Newsletter<\/a>. For the latest news, follow us on Facebook<\/a>, Twitter<\/a>, and Instagram<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n \u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n \u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source uk.news.yahoo.com \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Chris Columbus has directed some of the most enduring blockbusters of all time, from \u201cMrs. Doubtfire\u201d and the \u201cHome Alone\u201d films to the first two \u201cHarry Potter\u201d movies. But even with those movies under his belt, Columbus still found himself getting booted from 20th Century Fox\u2019s original \u201cFantastic Four\u201d movie. The director is credited as […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1983471,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[25173],"tags":[313549,313830,326583,355429,337434],"class_list":["post-1983470","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-artists","tag-20th-century-fox","tag-chris-columbus","tag-fantastic-four","tag-jack-kirby","tag-superhero-movie"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/\u2018Home-Alone-and-\u2018Harry-Potter-Director-Says-\u2018I-Was-Fired.jpeg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1983470","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1983470"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1983470\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1983471"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1983470"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1983470"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1983470"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}