Still dated for June 9, 2017, "Fantastic Four 2" is the elephant in the room no one at Fox wants to talk about the moment. Following the critical and commercial drubbing "Fantastic Four" took last weekend, not to mention the details of the behind-the-scenes squabbles coming to the surface, it’s clear the studio needs a solid, unshakeable gameplan if they have any hope of salvaging this franchise. And while there is a chorus being sung by certain corners that the studio should just hand the property back over to Marvel, it’s too valuable for them to just give up. And it appears they’ll figure out a way forward.
According to HitFix, the studio is "definitely planning to make" a followup, though it may not land on that 2017 date, which makes sense. Indeed, Fox will probably want to create some distance from Josh Trank‘s picture. Whoever comes aboard next to helm the franchise has a helluva task ahead and they will want some space from a movie that is going down as one of the worst comic book movie misses ever.
Of course, nothing is official just yet. I’m sure the studio is still running the numbers and looking at the calendar, while some executives might be worried about what the reported $60 million write-off on the movie means for their careers. As I noted yesterday, this is probably a time of introspection over at Fox, as they figure out what went wrong on "Fantastic Four," and how to make sure it doesn’t happen again if they press on. It will definitely be interesting to see how they navigate these waters.