While the complete commercial and critical failure of 2015's Fantastic Four reboot may make it hard to believe, Josh Trank was once seen as a very hot commodity in Hollywood after the break-out success of Chronicle. Having just broken the record for being the youngest director to have a movie open #1 at the box-office, at the age of 28, Trank had a series of projects to choose from, including a Venom pitch he'd proposed for Sony.
Described as a "hard-R Venom" in the vein of Jim Carrey's 1994 hit "The Mask", Trank had written a treatment with collaborator Rob Siegel. It seems to have not gotten far, however, as Venom and The Amazing Spider-Man producer Matt Tolmach is said to have "hated" it.
Trank himself blames the "authoritative" nature that Tolmach had approached the ordeal, describing how he “didn’t like how [he] was coming at me in that situation". “Well, if you don’t like what I’m doing" the film-maker continued, "and you’re telling me that I have to do something along the lines of what you want, and you’re going to tell it to me in this way — sorry, but I have other things I can be doing.”
While the reception to Fantastic Four makes it unlikely that Trank steps behind the camera for a big budget feature any time soon, he did eventually work with future Venom star Tom Hardy in his new directorial venture Capone. While the eventual Sony block-buster would stray far from Trank's R-rated idea, Hardy's mad-cap performance did rettain the same kind of energy one would expect out of an early 90's Jim Carrey vehicle like the Mask.
ComicBookMovie.com, and/or the user who contributed this post, may earn commissions or revenue through clicks or purchases made through any third-party links contained within the content above.