Encouraged by the warm reception of X-Men: First Class and the way everyone keeps posting photos of Andrew Garfield as the new Spider-Man despite their protests that it’s way too soon to have a “new” Spider-Man, Fox is still intent on doing a similar reboot of Fantastic Four, one that would echo most fans by completely ignoring the mid-’00s movie versions. At last report, the studio was attempting to woo Bruce Willis to take over for Michael Chiklis as The Thing, using the promise that he would mostly be responsible for simply voicing a Hulk-like, CGIed update of the character, thus leaving him plenty of time to play blues harmonica or whatever.
That particular idea seems to have petered out somewhat, but Variety reports that the script from Green Lantern’s Michael Green is still in play—and more promisingly, producer Akiva Goldsman is not—and that Fox is now toying with the idea of giving the franchise to Chronicle director Josh Trank. Of course, that’s contingent on Trank’s found-footage superhero film actually performing well, but as with the studio’s plans to give Daredevil another shot (and ditto the X-Men and Silver Surfer), what the reboot really hinges on is Fox wanting to retain its control over those Marvel characters, which it can only do so long as it continues to put them in movies. So unless Fox meets a girl in its yoga class, has some sort of Buddhist awakening, and just starts giving away all its earthly possessions, you will see a new Fantastic Four movie pretty soon. And Fox barely even goes to yoga as it is, so probably count on it.