Fantastic Four 2015 writer reveals how The Avengers inspired the box office flop

When Fantastic Four was brought to fans in 2015, it wasn't the triumphant reboot fans were hoping for. With a stacked cast and big studio backing, expectations were sky high. But what actually unfolded was a critical and commercial crash landing. Now, years later, the film’s writer is opening up about what really went on behind the scenes, and surprisingly, The Avengers played a major role.

Jeremy Slater, who wrote the film, opened up on its debacle in a candid conversation with ComicBook.com as he said:

"Honestly, my biggest tonal reference was The Avengers... I f-cking loved it. I was like, “Look — audiences love this movie. The box-office numbers don’t lie.” I thought we could really do something similar in terms of real scale and some giant, fun set pieces."

He then added how he soon realized that the Avengers film had far different elements, a powerful ensemble that was widely loved, and an insane budget- things that the Fantastic Four film wasn't lacking in terms of. Slater continued,

"But, let’s also not forget the secret sauce of that movie, which is the relationships. It’s Natasha and calming down Bruce. And it’s Clint joining the team. It’s Cap and Tony butting heads. That’s the reason that movie works, is because you like the characters and them bouncing off each other. The other thing is Avengers was a very expensive movie. Our budget was constantly shrinking as the project kept going. It’s easy to say, “Yeah, let’s go do Avengers,” but it’s hard to actually do it."

What was Fantastic Four (2015) about?

Still from Fantastic Four (Image via YouTube @/20th Century Studios)

Fantastic Four set out to reimagine Marvel’s first family with a bold, grounded sci-fi twist. What we got instead was a gloomy origin story that felt more like a science fair gone wrong than a superhero epic. Directed by Josh Trank, the film follows four brilliant young minds who teleport to a mysterious alternate dimension called Planet Zero. Things go terribly sideways, and they return with powers that are more a curse than a gift. Reed Richards becomes stretchy, Sue Storm turns invisible and manipulates force fields, Johnny Storm lights up like a human fireball, and Ben Grimm gets stuck in a rocky, hulking body.

Starring Miles Teller, Michael B. Jordan, Kate Mara, Jamie Bell, and Toby Kebbell as the half-baked villain Victor Von Doom, the film promised a fresh take but delivered... existential dread. Instead of teamwork and banter, we got isolation, trauma, and government labs. The chemistry was missing, the pacing was all over the place, and Doom’s evil plan arrived ten minutes before the credits rolled. Critics pounced, fans shrugged, and Marvel quietly looked away. It had the brains and the cast, but Fantastic Four was a moody reboot that never quite learned how to fly.