Whatever Happened To Fantastic Four Director Josh Trank?
You'd have been legitimately hard-pressed to find a filmmaker quite as in-demand as Josh Trank was in 2012. He had, after all, just released the stylish, found-footage superhero stunner "Chronicle," which unexpectedly rose from the ranks of low-budget marvel to full-blown blockbuster. Not surprisingly, that success led to several studio bosses offering Trank the director's chair on high-profile projects, including 2015's infamous superhero debacle, "Fantastic Four."
Fans of superhero cinema surely need no reminder of how wrong things went for Trank's "Fantastic Four," with production woes dogging the film ahead of a disastrous theatrical release. Making matters worse was Trank's decision to call out his bosses at 20th Century Fox ahead of the film's release via a since-deleted social media post in which he disowned the film, claiming the studio destroyed his vision in post-production. And yes, the film that was released ranks among the biggest superhero busts in Hollywood history. Though it may have cost him a "Star Wars" gig, the seeming career-killing failure of "Fantastic Four" did not end Trank's — though five years passed before his next directorial effort was released.
Trank's "Fantastic Four" followup was, of course, 2020's Tom Hardy-starring gangster biopic "Capone," which Trank also wrote, produced, edited, and appeared in. Unfortunately, the film never made it to the big screen, largely due to theatrical closures amid the then-raging COVID-19 pandemic. "Capone" instead debuted to middling reviews on streaming platforms in the summer of 2020 — and Josh Trank has hardly been heard from since.
Trank has been pretty quiet since the high profile failures of Fantastic Four and Capone
It should be noted that Josh Trank's general radio silence since the release of "Capone" is not the first time he's undertaken such a vanishing act. He essentially did the same amid the negative press and ensuing social media storm that accompanied the release of "Fantastic Four," telling GQ during a 2020 interview, "I had gone into pretty extreme isolation — it wasn't healthy." He'd go on to add, "I just started to become more and more of a shut-in because I was so humiliated by what was being said about me."
After getting back in the saddle for "Capone," Trank admitted to IndieWire during a 2020 chat that he was far more comfortable with any negative reviews of the film this go around because (as opposed to "Fantastic Four") they were at least reactions to his actual vision as a filmmaker. But that more level-headed approach still couldn't keep Trank from wading into problematic waters on social media platforms after "Capone" hit streaming video. Indeed, the filmmaker would once again take leave of platforms like Instagram and Twitter (now known as X) in 2020 after engaging with several "Capone" haters he felt were harassing him.
Trank's social media silence continues to this day, and despite a long-rumored Theodore Roosevelt biopic still being listed as "in development" on its IMDb page, it's been years since we've heard any news about that film. As of this writing, it remains unclear if Trank is even still working on it, or any other projects, for that matter.