Key Insights

• Columbus’s Role: Chris Columbus was initially set to produce the Fantastic Four films.
• Firing Incident: He was fired by 20th Century Fox for having strong opinions about the project.
• Superhero Genre Shift: His experience with Fantastic Four led to a diminished interest in superhero films.
• Upcoming Film: Columbus’s next project is The Thursday Murder Club, featuring a star-studded cast.

Chris Columbus, the director of Home Alone and the first two Harry Potter movies, is credited as an executive producer on Fantastic Four and Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer, but he told the Fade to Black podcast that he “had nothing to do with it.” That wasn’t always the case, as Columbus was meant to produce the movies before 20th Century Fox fired him.

“We were in a weird situation,” Columbus said. “On the first Fantastic Four, I had worked on a script. There were a lot of writers involved. They were about to make a movie and I was producing it. I met with the director and had some ideas. I basically said, ‘Some of this conceptual art should feel more like Jack Kirby, the creator of the Fantastic Four, and should feel more like the Silver Age of Marvel.’ I left that meeting and on the way back from my house I got a call from the head of 20th Century Fox saying I was fired and had too much of an opinion.“

Columbus was big on superhero movies at the time, but said his experience with Fantastic Four “probably soured me a little” on the genre. “Over the years people have done it so well that I personally lost interest in making a superhero movie,” he said. “It started a little bit with Spider-Man 2. When I saw what Sam Raimi did with that I thought it was a perfect superhero movie. Certainly Matt Reeves’ The Batman with Robert Pattinson was a brilliant film, too. I realized I don’t have a desire to make those movies anymore because people are doing them better than I ever could at this point in my career.“

Columbus’s next film is The Thursday Murder Club, a crime comedy based on the novel by Richard Osman. It stars Helen Mirren, Pierce Brosnan, Ben Kingsley, and Celia Imrie. Our own Alex Maidy had a lot of fun with the film. “A light and fun mystery, The Thursday Murder Club would have been a solid big-screen project back in the pre-COVID days,” Maidy wrote. “It is also one of the strongest originals from Netflix in a long time. It may not have explosions or stunt-heavy action, but The Thursday Murder Club is a funny mystery that keeps a whimsical tone as Mirren, Brosnan, Kingsley, and Imrie keep a smile on your face from beginning to end.” You can check out the rest of his review right here. The film will debut on Netflix on August 28.