|
|
|
July 08, 2005
So it seems that after more than a decade, the "official," big-budget version of The Fantastic Four is probably not much better than the unreleased Roger Corman version, which is highly sought after in the bootleg world.
It's an interesting story in that the movie rights to the Fantastic Four, presumably purchased by Neue Constantin Films in the early to mid 80s when no one else was interested, were about to expire in 1994 because no movie was in production. So Neue Constantin engaged New Horizons and Roger Corman to make a movie, preserving its option rights and forcing 20th Century Fox--which at the time was waiting for the rights to expire so Chris Columbus could make his own Fantastic Four movie--to pay a ton of money both for the rights and for no one to release the (hilariously awful) movie. It was highly profitable for Neue Constantin, who didn't actually have to release the movie, but it remains to be seen whether it made sense for Fox to sit on it for a decade (the Columbus version didn't get made) and then make a bad movie of its own, albeit one with probably 50 times the budget of the Corman version. (The trailer for Corman's Fantastic Four is hilarious and more memorable than sitting through the interminable movie, and features no sound work except for James Horner's inspired main title from Battle Beyond the Stars.) This is a bit like what happened with Cannon and the Spiderman movie. Cannon purchased the rights from Marvel when no one else was interested, but went bankrupt before Golan could put a suitable Spiderman project into production. However, he took the rights with him to 21st Century Pictures. The fight between Carolco--which was going to do a James Cameron-directed version--and 21st Century apparently never got resolved. Sony, which 21st Century was allied with, bought and/or kept the rights after 21st Century's bankruptcy, and then waited for a while before making the Raimi version. It's interesting in that Cannon's rights to the Spiderman movie franchise have today turned out to be worth perhaps several billion dollars to Sony, far more than anyone would have dreamed when they were sold. |