20th Century Fox is notable by its absence this year at Comic-Con. But that's not preventing the studio from dropping some news about big genre projects through the medium of these here magical Interwebs. We’ve already reported on Joe Cornish snagging the adaptation of **Rust. There are now potentially even bigger developments for two of the company’s Marvel titles, with Josh Trank now officially locked into Fantastic Four and David Slade dropping out of making Daredevil.
Trank’s presence in the big folding chair for the Fantastic Four reboot shouldn’t be hugely shocking. After all, he’s been rumoured for the job since before Chronicle came out. Since that film proved to be a sleeper hit and a great take on the superhero genre, Trank has been courted by most of the big studios and appeared to be headed for Sony’s new attempt to make Spider-Man villain Venom work as a stand-alone character (and possible future tie-in to the freshly-minted Amazing Spider-Man franchise).
But according to Deadline, Fox now expects that Trank will handle the Four film as his next gig and has even set it for release (though it has yet to announce a date).
Over at camp Daredevil, Slade’s departure is more of a surprise, since he had been happily plugging away at the reboot of the blind lawyer turned red-suited superhero.
But two elements were working against his continued involvement – his commitment to working on the Hannibal prequel TV series for US channel NBC, and the ticking rights clock, which means that Fox has to have a movie in production by the autumn or risk losing the character back to Marvel (and by extension, Disney). Though the studio is reportedly happy with the current script, it isn’t pushing the Man Without Fear quite as hard as Fantastic Four.
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