At the moment, Fantastic Four is sitting at 9% on RottenTomatoes, making it one of the most critically panned comic book films in history. Unless the score starts trending upwards any time soon, Fox’s Fantastic Four reboot will officially be worse than 1997’s Batman & Robin in the eyes of critics.
Taking all this into consideration, it’s not surprising to see that fans of the classic comic are desperate to get the characters out of Fox’s hands.
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Earlier this week, one of those fans started a petition for Fox to sell the Fantastic Four movie rights back to Marvel, an unlikely scenario, but one which has been discussed ad infinitum since the movie released over the weekend.
“Josh Tank’s Fantastic Four was a major disappointment,” reads the petition, presumably playing off the director’s name, which is Josh Trank. “Critics and fans of the film panned the movie and performed poorly at the box office. Please sign this petition so we can have a great adaptation of Marvel’s first family once and for all. Sign this petition also because WE DON’T WANT ANOTHER SEQUEL!!!!! Let the fans have what they want and MAKE FOX SELL THE RIGHTS BACK TO MARVEL!!!!”
Not the most eloquent request, but as of writing, the petition has already garnered well over 17,000 signatures and shows no signs of slowing.
Fox’s president of domestic distribution Chris Aronson told The New York Times on Sunday that the studio has no plans to part with the franchise, but with analysts estimating that Fox could lose $60 million on the reboot, the studio is going to have to do something drastic to make audiences take a chance on the Fantastic Four again.
Between the universally negative reviews, the Twitter outburst by Trank, the failure to reach number one at the box office on opening weekend and the estimated tens of millions of dollars in losses, Fantastic Four might be the most disastrous comic book movie release in history. If that’s not enough to make Fox give up, I don’t know what is.
