Fantastic Four writer-producer Simon Kinberg defends film: 'I am proud of it. It's not a disaster.'

On Aug. 7, audiences will finally get their chance to see Fox’s highly anticipated reboot of Fantastic Four. A darker take on the iconic comic-book franchise, Four has a great cast (Miles Teller, Kate Mara, Michael B. Jordan, Jamie Bell) and a talented director (Chronicle‘s Josh Trank) but has been plagued with rumors of trouble for months. The cast itself still hasn’t seen the finished movie, and Trank reportedly clashed with writer/producer Simon Kinberg, a schism they may have been behind Trank leaving his Star Wars spin-off.

EW sat down withKinberg (X-Men: Days of Future Past), who admitted the production was a challenging experience in many ways but defended this big budget film. “What I do think we had was a very young director making a very big movie. And a director that, for whatever reason, people were either rooting against or his personality troubled the press. So it just got viewed differently than any other movie that’s a tough movie. We came in on schedule, under budget, [with] a movie that was pretty true to the original intent of the film. Whether people like it or not, it was his vision, which was a more grounded, a much more real version of Fantastic Four. Was it an easy production? No. Was it harder than a lot of the movies I’ve been on? No. But I may also have a higher threshold. I think there was something about Josh’s identity that made him a good target. I’m not sure what that is.”

Kinberg is hopeful that Four becomes a new franchise. “I am proud of it,” he says. “It’s not a disaster. It’s a good movie. I find Fantastic Four a hard book to adapt. I think the tone is very tricky it. It’s deceptively simple. Figuring out the comedy and the drama and the powers themselves are hard to fit into a tone that is as grounded as we wanted to make it. But I’m happy with the way that it turned out. I really love this cast, and I want to keep making movies with them.”

A version of this story, which includes news about Kinberg’s involvement with the Star Wars films, appeared in Entertainment Weekly issue #1375, on newsstands now or available for immediate purchase here.