Miles Teller Says One Key Player Derailed 2015’s Fantastic Four
Nearly a decade after Fantastic Four cratered, Miles Teller says a brutal studio preview foretold the fiasco — and points to one pivotal power player as the reason it all went wrong.
Miles Teller is on a busy streak right now: romancing Elizabeth Olsen forever in a movie literally called 'Eternity,' popping up in Antoine Fuqua's Michael Jackson biopic, and casually revisiting the exact moment he knew 2015's Fantastic Four was cooked.
What Teller is up to now
'Eternity' pairs Teller with Elizabeth Olsen, with David Freyne directing from a Pat Cunnane script that landed on the 2022 Black List. No points for subtlety in the title, but the pairing is a good one.
He also shows up as John Branca in 'Michael,' Fuqua's take on Jackson's life. Teller is barely in the trailer, but it still racked up 116.2 million views in its first 24 hours on Lionsgate's official YouTube channel. Casual.
The Fantastic Four autopsy
Before Top Gun: Maverick turned him into the guy yelling 'talk to me,' a 20-something Teller took the superhero swing with Fox's Fantastic Four reboot. On Andy Cohen's SiriusXM show, he said the quiet part out loud about what happened when he first saw the cut.
'I remember talking to one of the studio heads and said, "I think we’re in trouble."'
He also explained the mindset at the time: if you wanted to be seen as a leading man, you got on the cape-and-cowl train. He thought the cast was stacked and still has love for everyone who signed on. So how did it go so sideways?
What went wrong (the quick version)
- Production was a mess. Trade reports at the time painted director Josh Trank as clashing hard with 20th Century Fox and behaving erratically on set, and the movie went through major reshoots.
- Trank publicly disowned the theatrical cut on social media the week it opened, which tells you everything about the internal tug-of-war.
- Teller did not name names, but he strongly hinted one key figure tanked the whole thing: 'Maybe there was one really important person who kind of fucked it all up.'
- He stressed the part people forget: a lot of crew and cast worked incredibly hard trying to land the plane.
After the dust settled
That 2015 faceplant effectively froze the franchise at Fox. The rights later moved back under the Marvel umbrella, and the source piece frames it as the MCU bringing Marvel's first family into the fold earlier this year via a project titled 'The Fantastic Four: First Steps,' with the team also headed toward a crossover in 'Avengers: Doomsday.' Titles and timelines can shift, but the takeaway is clear: Marvel is setting the table for a fresh, connected version of the team.
As for Teller, he has shaken off the rubber-suit era just fine. If 'Eternity' and 'Michael' both hit, he is about to be everywhere again — without a single blue bodysuit in sight.