Fantastic Four Director Says He Got Death Threats for Casting Michael B. Jordan as Johnny Storm
Director Josh Trank slept with a .38 Special gun on his nightstand during the production of his 2015 film, Fantastic Four.
In a new interview with Polygon, Trank recalled the backlash he received for casting Michael B. Jordan as Johnny Storm, a character who is described as white in the original comic books.
"For the world I grew up in, a racially intense Los Angeles where we were used to seeing white superheroes, some of my friends who were black should have seen a black superhero," Trank, 36, said. "So I felt that while being in a position of power, I could change the system a little bit.”
“I was getting threats on IMDb message boards saying they were going to shoot me,” he recalled. “I was so f------ paranoid during that shoot. If someone came into my house, I would have ended their f------ life."
Eric Charbonneau/Invision/AP/Shutterstock Josh Trank
At a certain point, Trank says he began to fear for his life, purchasing the gun to keep next to his bed. He later returned the .38 Special after wrapping the movie.
"When you’re in a head space where people want to get you, you think, ‘I’m going to defend myself,'" he explained.
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Jordan, 33, himself even addressed the backlash in an essay posted on Entertainment Weekly, urging people to catch up to the reality of the real world and the need to embrace diversity in Hollywood.
"I can see everybody’s perspective, and I know I can’t ask the audience to forget 50 years of comic books. But the world is a little more diverse in 2015 than when the Fantastic Four comic first came out in 1961," he wrote at the time.
"To the trolls on the Internet, I want to say: Get your head out of the computer. Go outside and walk around," Jordan later continued. "Look at the people walking next to you. Look at your friends’ friends and who they’re interacting with. And just understand this is the world we live in. It’s okay to like it."
20th Century Fox/Marvel/Kobal/Shutterstock Michael B. Jordan
The Black Panther star then noted that even the revered Stan Lee endorsed his casting.
"Plus, if Stan Lee writes an email to my director saying, 'You’re good. I’m okay with this,' who am I to go against that?" Jordan said.
While the 2015 film only ended up earning a 9 percent rating on Rotten Tomatoes, Trank recently praised the cast, which also included, Miles Teller, Kate Mara and Jamie Bell.
“Everyone in the film is a great actor, and overall there is a movie in there, somewhere,” he wrote in November. “And that cast deserves to be in THAT movie. Everyone who worked on Fant4stic clearly wanted to be making THAT movie. But… ultimately… It wasn’t.”
Last year, Marvel Studios confirmed it would be making its own MCU Fantastic Four movie. According to Screenrant, the film is expected to come out in 2023.
