FANTASTIC FOUR Director Josh Trank Bought A Gun To Protect Himself From Johnny Storm Casting Backlash

We've brought you guys a lot of highlights from Josh Trank's recent profile over at Polygon, but this...well, it's a weird one.

As you may recall, when Chronicle star Michael B. Jordan was cast as Johnny Storm/Human Torch in the Fantastic Four reboot, many fans were left fuming, and while some were simply unhappy with changes made to the comic books, others were just full-on racist. 

Jordan - an extremely talented actor who has since gone on to impress in everything from Creed to Black Panther - even got Stan Lee's seal of approval, but that didn't really ease the backlash.

Now, Trank has revealed just how much the negative reaction got to him while he was working on Fantastic Four. 

"I was getting threats on IMDb message boards saying they were going to shoot me," the filmmaker recalls, revealing that he started keeping a loaded .38 special on his nightstand.

"I was so f*cking paranoid during that shoot," he continues. "If someone came into my house, I would have ended their f*cking life. When you’re in a head space where people want to get you, you think, ‘I’m going to defend myself.’" Trank notes that he returned the gun once production wrapped. 

It's awful to think that so much of the backlash was a result of Jordan's skin colour, and it was clearly rough on him and Trank seeing what people were saying online while they were shooting.