Miles Teller Blames “Very Important Person” for Marvel Movie’s Failure 10 Years Ago

After making a splash in 2014 with “Whiplash,” Miles Teller quickly leveraged his newfound fame to join the cast of Josh Trank’s 2015 “Fantastic Four.” The process of writing, filming, and post-production was a nightmare for the young director, ultimately resulting in a commercial disaster which we detailed previously.

A Disastrous Failure Due to One Person?

Let’s remember that at the time, not only was the film panned by critics (scoring 2 out of 5 on AlloCiné) and audiences (rating it 1.8 out of 5), but it also bombed at the box office, earning only $167.8 million by the end of its run. It performed worse than the two earlier movies of the saga released in 2005 and 2007.

Speaking with Andy Cohen on SiriusXM, Teller, who played Reed Richards aka Mister Fantastic, humorously reflected on the film’s flop, saying:

“Honestly, I don’t know what went wrong, we had a great film, great marketing…” he started, sarcastically. He then added more seriously:

“I think [the poor quality of the film] is really unfortunate because a lot of people worked very hard on it, and honestly, I think there was one very important person who really messed it up.”

“It Was Our Chance…”

Teller did not name the person he was referring to. Was it one of the film’s producers? The editor Stephen E. Rivkin, who was tasked with reworking the film according to the studio’s wishes? The culprit may be named someday, or perhaps it’s a bit of everyone’s fault, as current information suggests. Time will tell.

For Teller, the disappointment was profound:

“When you’re a young actor at that time, if you want to be taken seriously as a leading man, you have to get on that superhero train. It was our chance [to do that], I thought the cast was fantastic, I loved all the actors. But when I first saw the film, I remember telling one of the studio heads: ‘I think we have a problem’…”

Since the failure of that film, the Fantastic Four franchise has seen a new release in July last year starring Pedro Pascal and Vanessa Kirby. Grossing $521.8 million worldwide, it has become the most successful installment of the franchise since its inception in 2005, far surpassing the 2015 version.