• Screenwriter Jeremy Slater says he didn’t know his Fantastic Four script was discarded until he watched the finished film in theaters
• Slater told THR he had been confidently telling people the reboot would be “the next Dark Knight trilogy” for two years
• The 2015 film, directed by Josh Trank, holds a 9% Rotten Tomatoes score and lost an estimated $80–$100 million for 20th Century Fox
• Miles Teller, who played Mister Fantastic, previously suggested “one really important person” ruined the film
• The Fantastic Four have since been rebooted in the MCU, with the new cast set to appear in Avengers: Doomsday this December

For roughly two years, Jeremy Slater was the most confident man in Hollywood. He had co-written what he believed was a genuinely great Fantastic Four script, had a wonderful creative partnership with director Josh Trank, and was actively telling anyone who would listen that they were sitting on something special. “You guys, just wait for Fantastic Four,” he remembered telling people. “We’re the next Christopher Nolan. We’ve got the next Dark Knight trilogy on the way.“

Then he sat down at the screening.

“It wasn’t until I was sitting there in that first audience and realizing, ‘Oh no, something happened here,'” Slater told The Hollywood Reporter. “There was nothing in there that remotely resembled what I had set out to do.”

Slater, whose new film Mortal Kombat II is in theaters now, was remarkably candid about what it’s like to be a writer on a massive studio blockbuster — which is to say, almost completely in the dark. He said he had no idea there was any trouble on set because he simply wasn’t there. The call that effectively ended his involvement came in the form of a familiar Hollywood euphemism. “I got the call that you almost always get on these big blockbuster movies: ‘Hey, we’re going to bring in some fresh eyes,'” he said. “Then the next time you see the movie is when you’re sitting down at the screening three years later.”

He wasn’t even told his script had been thrown out entirely. That part he had to figure out himself, in real time, watching a film that bore no resemblance to the one he thought he’d written.

What Actually Went Wrong With Fantastic Four

The 2015 reboot — starring Miles Teller as Mister Fantastic, Kate Mara as Invisible Woman, Jamie Bell as The Thing, and Michael B. Jordan as Human Torch — was intended to launch a whole new franchise for 20th Century Fox. Instead, it became one of the most notorious misfires in superhero movie history. It earned just $168 million worldwide against a budget that left the studio facing losses somewhere between $80 and $100 million. Its Rotten Tomatoes score sits at a brutal 9%. The Razzie Awards gave it Worst Picture, and Trank picked up Worst Director. The planned sequel was quietly buried.

Slater is careful not to point fingers at Trank — he says his working relationship with the director was genuinely great. But he’s honest about what the experience taught him. “When you’re a writer and you’re playing in other people’s sandboxes, it’s really out of your control,” he said. “You don’t really have any bearing on the quality of the finished product. You just hope that your collaborators all want to make the same movie you wanted to make.”

Miles Teller has been somewhat less diplomatic about the whole thing. “I think it’s unfortunate for that, because so many people worked so hard on that movie and, honestly, maybe there was one really important person who fucked it all up,” he said previously. Teller also recalled the moment he knew things had gone sideways: “When I first saw the movie, I remember talking to one of the studio heads and I was like, ‘I think we’re in trouble.'” He’d taken the role partly out of a practical calculation — “if you want to be taken seriously as a leading man you gotta get on this superhero train” — and this was supposed to be his moment. The casting, he still maintains, was spectacular. Everything else, less so.

The Franchise Gets Another Shot — This Time in the MCU

Of course, Marvel’s First Family has since been handed a proper reset. The Fantastic Four: First Steps brought in an entirely new cast, and they’re already headed into the MCU’s biggest crossover event yet with Avengers: Doomsday, arriving December 18.

Ebon Moss-Bachrach, who plays The Thing in the new iteration, recently opened up about what it’s like to navigate a production of that scale — and his experience sounds almost comically different from the controlled chaos of the 2015 film. Speaking on the Happy Sad Confused podcast, he described Doomsday as more “compartmentalized” than First Steps, where the Fantastic Four cast was present “every day, every day, having a sense of the thing.” On Doomsday, the sheer size of it was a lot to hold in his head. “How it was connecting to other universes, I would have to go back to, like, ‘Joe [Russo] can you just, I know you’ve talked me through, can you just tell me one more time?'”

He also confirmed he never actually saw a complete script. “Those scripts change quite a bit,” he said. “Probably not, it probably didn’t have a full, like, third act. I don’t think it had an ending. I don’t think anyone gets to see that stuff.”

There were some compensations, though. Moss-Bachrach described working alongside Robert Downey Jr. — returning to the MCU as Doctor Doom — as a genuine highlight. “What a wonderful man. Like, what a great set leader he was. He’s been doing this for a long time and he was so generous and really, like, checking in, making sure everyone was good. Really good coach energy there.” He also recalled looking around the room at the assembled cast — which includes Chris Evans, Chris Hemsworth, Anthony Mackie, Letitia Wright, the Fox-era X-Men, and more — and having a quiet moment of disbelief. “There’s Ian McKellen, and there’s Channing Tatum. It’s a lot.”

For Jeremy Slater, the whole Fantastic Four saga is clearly just one of those war stories you carry with you in this business. He walked in thinking he was building a legacy. He walked out of a theater wondering what happened. “You always go in with the highest of hopes and the best of aspirations,” he said. “But sometimes the projects don’t turn out the way that you dreamed about or envisioned.”

The 2015 film is currently streaming on Disney+, if you’re feeling brave.

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• Marvel Comics is launching the Midnight Universe, a horror-themed publishing line debuting in August 2025.
• Three launch titles will reimagine Spider-Man, the X-Men, and the Fantastic Four in dark, terrifying new ways.
• Jonathan Hickman, Benjamin Percy, and Phillip Kennedy Johnson are among the superstar creators attached.
• Midnight Spider-Man’s mutation storyline runs parallel to what’s being teased in the MCU’s Spider-Man: Brand New Day.
• The line is Marvel’s most ambitious creator-driven horror push since the original New Universe.

Marvel Comics is going to a very dark place — and it’s bringing Spider-Man, the X-Men, and the Fantastic Four with it.

The publisher has officially unveiled the Midnight Universe, a bold new horror-themed publishing line launching this August with three titles that take some of the most beloved characters in comics history and drag them somewhere they’ve never quite been before. The tagline says it all: “The Light Had Its Turn.”

The three launch titles are Midnight X-Men by Jonathan Hickman and artist Matteo Della Fonte, Midnight Fantastic Four by Benjamin Percy and Kev Walker, and Midnight Spider-Man by Phillip Kennedy Johnson alongside artist Scie Tronc — making his Marvel Comics debut. More titles are expected to be announced in the months ahead.

What the Midnight Universe Actually Is

Marvel Editor in Chief C.B. Cebulski framed the Midnight Universe as the next chapter in the publisher’s long tradition of bold alternate-world storytelling. “From the original New Universe to two Ultimate Universes, Marvel has a long history of creating and inspiring bold worlds filled with unforgettable characters and fresh ideas that feel new yet recognizable at the same time,” he said. “With the new Midnight line, we’ve given some of our most outstanding creators the opportunity to delve into the darkest corners of their imaginations and birth some of the creepiest, most terrifying takes on the Marvel Universe you’ve ever seen.”

The official description doesn’t pull punches: “The X-Men no longer fight for acceptance, they hunger for blood. The Fantastic Four venture into the unknown not to save the world — but to unleash terror upon it. And Spider-Man discovers that with great power… comes something monstrous.”

The line is described as interconnected through rich lore-building, with creators given free rein to push the stories wherever they want — “boundary-less, creator-driven storytelling” that Marvel says will keep readers on edge issue after issue. It’s being positioned as Marvel’s answer to DC’s wildly popular Absolute line, which has done enormous business by reimagining iconic heroes through a darker, more ambitious lens.

Breaking Down Each Title

In Midnight X-Men, the shadows of New York City are stalked by vampires and what Marvel calls the “mutant empyres.” A fragile peace between two species is on the verge of collapse, and an all-out war is coming — with the unturned caught in the middle. Hickman, who previously redefined mutantkind with House of X and more recently launched the acclaimed Ultimate Spider-Man, sounds genuinely lit up about this one. “I’m so enthusiastic about this project — it’s the most excited I’ve been in years,” he said. “The conceit of Midnight X-Men aligns perfectly with the kind of stories I like to tell. It has a rich, open-ended mythology that equally mixes old and new ideas into something that feels both familiar and original.”

Midnight Fantastic Four reimagines Marvel’s first family as something far more sinister: an obsessive scientist who pushes too far into the secrets of the universe, leaving himself and three others warped in horrible ways. Benjamin Percy, whose credits include Wolverine and Punisher, is writing it — and his description of signing on is peak horror-writer energy. “If you’ve read my work, you know that I see the world through a dark, disturbed lens. To me, it’s always midnight,” Percy said. “When Hickman called me, it was from a landline in the basement of an abandoned house with the wires cut. Blood poured from the receiver into my ear. I said yes.”

And then there’s Midnight Spider-Man. A young Peter Parker is transformed into a hideous spider hybrid by the ruthless Oscorp Corporation, which is hunting for the secret to eternal life. When Oscorp starts using the secrets unlocked by his mutation to create more human-animal hybrids, Peter embraces his grotesque new form to stop them. It’s a body-horror reimagining of one of the most familiar origin stories in pop culture — and Phillip Kennedy Johnson, fresh off Infernal Hulk, is writing it alongside debut Marvel artist Scie Tronc.

The Eerie Parallel to Spider-Man: Brand New Day

Here’s where things get genuinely interesting. The mutation angle in Midnight Spider-Man isn’t just a comics-only idea right now — it’s running parallel to what Marvel Studios is teasing for the MCU’s Spider-Man: Brand New Day. In the film’s first trailer, Bruce Banner warns Peter that if his “DNA is mutating, it would be enormously dangerous.” Organic web-shooters appear to be coming too.

Spider-Man mutation isn’t new territory — Spider-Man: The Animated Series famously turned Peter into Man-Spider during its “Six Arms Saga” adaptation, and the comics storyline “The Other” saw him reborn from a cocoon with terrifying new abilities. But the fact that both the comics and the movies are leaning into this idea at roughly the same time feels like more than coincidence. It speaks to something Marvel clearly believes: that pushing Peter Parker to his most monstrous extreme is the freshest direction left to take him. After the massive success of the 2024 Ultimate Spider-Man series, Marvel has proven it can reinvent its flagship hero without losing what makes him matter.

The “Cloaked Covers” and What Comes Next

Marvel has already revealed the main cover for Midnight X-Men #1 by artist Dike Ruan — and it comes with a genuinely clever gimmick. The Midnight titles will feature “Cloaked Covers,” partially obscured artwork that only fully reveals itself when you turn the page. After the debut issues, that full artwork will remain hidden in shadow for subsequent covers, only giving itself up to readers brave enough to actually pick them up off the stands.

The full Midnight Universe line is set to roll out through Summer and Fall 2026, with more titles expected to be announced. Marvel has promised that characters like Blade and Werewolf by Night will also have a place in this world — so the three launch titles are just the beginning of whatever nightmare they’re building here.

“For over 80 years, Marvel heroes have inspired hope,” the publisher declared. “This August, that hope dies.”

The post Marvel’s Midnight Universe: Horror Versions of Spider-Man, X-Men & Fantastic Four appeared first on Cream.

• Matt Shakman, director of Fantastic Four: First Steps, is set to direct a new Planet of the Apes movie at 20th Century Studios.
• Josh Friedman, who wrote both Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes and Fantastic Four: First Steps, is returning to write the script.
• The new film will reportedly be a fresh original story — not a sequel to 2024’s Kingdom, leaving that film’s cliffhanger unresolved.
• Rick Jaffa and Amanda Silver, producers on the previous Apes films, are back on board alongside Shakman.
• This would be the 11th Planet of the Apes movie overall, in a franchise that has amassed over $1.7 billion at the worldwide box office.

Matt Shakman is trading Marvel’s first family for a planet full of talking primates. The Fantastic Four: First Steps director has been tapped to helm a brand-new Planet of the Apes movie at 20th Century Studios, with Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes writer Josh Friedman returning to pen the script.

The two worked together on last summer’s Fantastic Four: First Steps, which brought in $521 million globally, so there’s already a creative shorthand between them. Shakman will also produce alongside franchise veterans Rick Jaffa and Amanda Silver, who have been shepherding the Apes series since the 2011 reboot. Scott Aversano, executive VP of production at 20th Century Studios, will oversee the project for the studio.

Plot details are being kept tightly under wraps, but here’s what we do know: the film will return to the world where apes are the dominant species. What it won’t do, at least according to sources, is pick up where 2024’s Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes left off. The new movie is being described as a fresh original story that Shakman and Friedman are developing together — not a continuation of the most recent chapter in the franchise.

The Cliffhanger That’s Being Left Behind

For fans of Kingdom, that’s a lot to sit with. Wes Ball’s film — which earned $397.3 million worldwide and was generally well received — ended on a genuinely tantalizing note. Freya Allan’s Mae returns to a hidden underground colony of humans, having retrieved a device capable of restoring global satellite communication. The final reveal: pockets of humanity are still alive and organized around the world, ready to coordinate a push to reclaim the planet from the apes. It’s a setup that practically screamed sequel.

Leaving that thread dangling is a bold call, and a somewhat puzzling one given that Friedman wrote Kingdom himself and is now coming back for this new chapter. The franchise does have a precedent for this kind of storytelling whiplash — 1970’s Beneath the Planet of the Apes literally ended with the Earth exploding, and a sequel arrived the very next year anyway — but it still stings for audiences invested in where Mae’s story was going.

Whether the new film exists within the same timeline as Kingdom or carves out something entirely separate hasn’t been confirmed. The only thing sources have made clear is that it’s a new original story, set on a planet still ruled by apes.

Why Shakman Makes Sense for This

If you’re going to hand someone a franchise built on groundbreaking visual effects and emotionally complex characters, Shakman is a reasonable choice. His Emmy-nominated work on Marvel’s WandaVision — which required him to juggle genre experimentation, massive VFX, and genuine character depth — is what first put him on the map as a blockbuster director. That show led directly to Fantastic Four: First Steps, which included motion-capture work for The Thing, echoing the kind of performance-driven digital craft that made Andy Serkis’ Caesar in the earlier Apes trilogy so celebrated.

His television résumé is equally stacked. He’s directed episodes of Game of Thrones and The Boys, helmed the pilot for Apple TV+’s Monarch: Legacy of Monsters, and also directed pilots for The Great (starring Elle Fanning and Nicholas Hoult), The Consultant, and Welcome to Chippendales. Up next, before Apes takes over his schedule, he’ll direct the pilot and finale of Wild Things, starring Jude Law and Andrew Garfield.

Friedman, meanwhile, has become one of 20th Century Studios’ most trusted writers. Beyond Kingdom and Fantastic Four, he co-wrote both Avatar: The Way of Water and Avatar: Fire and Ash for the studio — meaning he has a track record of working within sprawling, effects-heavy worlds that demand as much storytelling discipline as spectacle.

A Franchise With Staying Power

It’s worth remembering just how improbable the modern Apes renaissance actually was. After Tim Burton’s 2001 remake landed with a thud, the franchise looked finished. Then Rise of the Planet of the Apes arrived in 2011 with Andy Serkis delivering a motion-capture performance as Caesar that critics and audiences genuinely loved, and suddenly the series was one of Hollywood’s most reliable properties again. The Caesar trilogy collectively grossed over $1.5 billion worldwide. Kingdom proved the series could survive beyond that era.

Now, with Shakman and Friedman at the helm, this would become the 11th Planet of the Apes film in a franchise that dates back to 1968, when Charlton Heston first stumbled onto that beach and into cinema history. The total franchise box office now stands at over $1.7 billion — a number that makes the decision to keep expanding it, sequel or not, an easy one for 20th Century Studios.

And in what might be the most delightfully absurd footnote to all of this: Marvel Comics is currently publishing a crossover miniseries called Planet of the Apes vs. Fantastic Four — colliding the exact two franchises Shakman now has his fingerprints on. Sometimes the universe just has a sense of humor.

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