‘I want a Fantastic Four flick, and I don’t want it good – I want it Tuesday!’
With these immortal words, German producer Bernd Eichinger commissioned legendary independent filmmaker Roger Corman to make a film based on Marvel Comics’ The Fantastic Four. The twist? It was never meant to be seen by the public.
In the first issue of Stan Lee and Jack Kirby’s The Fantastic Four comic, published in November 1961, four astronauts – inventor Reed Richards, his scientist fiancée Susan Storm, her younger brother Johnny, and their friend Ben Grimm – were granted superpowers following exposure to an alien phenomenon during the first spaceflight of their experimental rocket. Richards was reborn as ‘Mr. Fantastic’, able to elongate any part of his body; Susan became ‘The Invisible Girl’ (self-explanatory); hot-headed Johnny could ignite himself into living flame, becoming ‘The Human Torch’; most tragically, Ben’s body took on stone-like properties, granting him superhuman strength and the nickname ‘The Thing’.
It was an instant success, but – Invisible Girl aside – the special effects required to bring such superpowers to the screen were not available to filmmakers until the late 1980s. It was then that Eichinger took an open-ended option to make a Fantastic Four film, on the proviso that it entered production by the end of 1992. In the meantime, Tim Burton’s Batman became one of cinema’s biggest ever box office and merchandising success stories, opening the doors to anyone with the rights to a hot superhero property.
Eichinger hatched a plan as brilliant, cunning and diabolical as any the Fantastic Four’s nemesis, Dr Doom, had ever dreamed up. By making an ultra-low-budget film, the producer could hold onto the rights, hoping that in the meantime, he would be able to set up a big deal at a major studio. If such a deal could not be made, the producer would still be left holding the negative of a Fantastic Four film, which could be released at a profit. Roger Corman, who – according to the title of his own autobiography – ‘Made a Hundred Movies in Hollywood and Never Lost a Dime’ was chosen to make the film, and Oley Sassone (Bloodfist III: Forced to Fight) was hired to direct. Principal photography began on Boxing Day 1992, just five days before the rights were due to expire. It lasted a mere four weeks.
The producer hatched a plan as cunning and diabolical as any of Dr Doom’s
Alex Hyde-White and Rebecca Staab played Reed Richards and Susan Storm respectively; actor/stuntman Carl Ciarfalio (The Incredible Hulk Returns) donned a convincingly concrete costume to play Ben Grimm, while Jay Underwood burned his scalp and almost fried his hair off, dying his brown locks blond to play Johnny Storm. Lee had longed to see his self-styled ‘World’s Greatest Comic Book’ on screen, but understandably had concerns about the $1.5 million budget – a fraction of Batman’s $35 million price tag. ‘I have a sentimental attachment to The Fantastic Four,’ he said, ‘and I was heartbroken to think it might appear only as a low-budget quickie’.
Then, just days before its January 1994 premiere, it emerged that Eichinger had bought back the film’s negative, intending to shelve it – permanently. ‘I feel very, very sorry for the actors and the director and most of the people involved in it,’ a disappointed Lee commented. Six months later, 20th Century Fox announced that it had secured the rights from Eichinger, hiring Home Alone and Mrs Doubtfire director Chris Columbus to direct a brand new $40 million movie, with real-life couple Dennis Quaid and Meg Ryan tipped to star. Corman’s budget-challenged yet well-meaning production would be relegated to fuzzy bootlegs sold at comic conventions and under the counters of video rental stores.
Ironically, Columbus’ film never happened, torpedoed by post-Batman superhero flops such as The Phantom and The Shadow. It would be another decade before Fox cashed in on the noughties success of The X-Men and Spider-Man by making a Fantastic Four film, with the then-unknown Chris Evans – Marvel’s future Captain America – as Johnny Storm.
A year before its 2005 release, moviegoers had marvelled at another family of superheroes, featuring super-strong inventor Mr Incredible and his wife, stretchy superhero Elastigirl, clearly a riff on the Fantastic Four. The success of The Incredibles did not doom the box office prospects of The Fantastic Four, however: it was as big a hit as The X-Men. But the 2007 sequel, Rise of the Silver Surfer, was a flop and a third film failed to materialise.
Now, as Marvel’s own The Fantastic Four: First Steps towers over the summer box office like the shadow of Galactus, Roger Corman’s 1994 version remains officially unreleased anywhere in the world.
But you can watch it here. How’s that for fantastic?
David Hughes wrote about unproduced versions of The Fantastic Four in his book The Greatest Sci-Fi Movies Never Made.
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