‘Harry Potter’ And ‘Home Alone’ Director Chris Columbus Recalls Being Fired From A Fantastic Four Film For Having “Too Much Of An Opinion”
Chris Columbus (who has no relation to the polarizing historical figure who “sailed the ocean blue” and “discovered” America) has quite the career to boast about. Since the 1980s, he’s been a director churning out certified classics from Home Alone to Mrs. Doubtfire, and he became identifiable with the Harry Potter series after helming Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone (2001) and Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (2002) back to back.
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Those are credits many could retire with and let the royalties roll in, but Columbus remains active, and opinonated, according to some. This ‘tendency’, if you can call it that, once got him removed from a film he wanted to do. That film, which would have brought him into the world of Marvel just as they were hitting their stride, was what became Fox’s first crack at The Fantastic Four.
“We were in a weird situation on Fantastic Four, the first Fantastic Four [not Roger Corman’s]. I had worked on a script, and there were a lot of writers involved. And then they were about to make the movie, and they were producing it, and I came in and met with the director and producer, and I had some ideas,” Columbus said to Hanna Flint for the Fade to Black podcast (via Superhero Hype).
His ideas might shock you. He wanted to be true to the source material, of all things, and Jack Kirby, the co-creator. “I basically said, ‘Some of this conceptual art should feel more like Jack Kirby,’ who was the artist of the Fantastic Four. It should feel more like the Silver Age of Marvel,” he recalled.
However, Columbus quickly realized voicing his view was the wrong move as the producers didn’t share his feeling. “I left that meeting and, on the way back to my house, I got a call from the head of 20th Century Fox saying you’re fired. You had too much of an opinion,” he said.
Iniitially, it was reported Columbus stepped down to focus on something else, and that’s why they still gave him an EP credit. However, it didn’t mean anything as he had no input on the 2005 film or its sequel, Rise of the Silver Surfer. “Those two Fantastic Four movies, we had nothing to do with. We got an executive producer credit on them,” he added.
Chris Columbus had a desire to make superhero movies at one time, including a Daredevil adaptation, but that inclination faded over the years. This was for a variety of reasons though getting fired suddenly from Fantastic Four didn’t help. “Over the years, people have done it so well that I sort of, personally, lost interest in making a superhero movie,” Columbus began.
“I think it started a little bit with Spider-Man 2, when I saw what Sam Raimi did with Spider-Man 2. At the time, I thought it was a perfect movie. Then, bits and pieces along the way – the first Batman films, and certainly the latest, Matt Reeves’ The Batman with [Robert] Pattinson. That was a brilliant film,” he continued.
“I realized I don’t have the desire to make those films, anymore. People are doing it better than I could ever imagine doing it at this point in my career, and I love what’s going on with it,” he explained. “Probably getting fired on the Fantastic Four films probably soured me a little bit.”
