As Fantastic Four continues to face disappointing reviews and poor box office returns, long-standing rumors of difficulties during the film's production have been confirmed as true. Such conflicts include clashes between director Josh Trank and Fox, as well as Trank getting into a confrontation with actor Miles Teller. It was also claimed that Trank discouraged his cast from reading the Fantastic Four comic books, which gave the impression that he disliked the Marvel Comics stories. Yet it has been revealed that he did not reject the source material but was overruled on incorporating aspects of the "World's Greatest Comics Magazine" into the film.
According to ''Entertainment Weekly'', Trank seemed to have a positive rapport with Emma Watts, Fox's president of production. Furthermore, as the magazine reports, he was very much enthusiastic about bringing elements from the comic book into the script: "By all accounts, Trank dove in with zeal, devising plans that combined playful comic-book elements of the Marvel Comics characters withe darker, almost horrorlike tone that made Chronicle so bracing."
Perhaps most interesting is the revelation that the director sought to include the Fantasticar and H.E.R.B.I.E the Robot (Humanoid Experimental Robot, B-Type, Integrated Electronics) in the film. Entertainment Weekly states Trank might have become "too enthusiastic, constantly throwing new and bigger ideas into the mix and changing his own mind about major plot points, like the kinds of powers Doctor Doom should possess." Ultimately, Watts rejected Trank's plans as "geeky elements"; according to the source, "She deemed Trank's ideas too scattered; he felt she wasn't getting it."
Curiously, Fox's overruling of Trank bears a similarity to Zak Penn's comment that his plan to have Fantastic Four appear in the X-Men movies was rejected.