I’ll be honest, the version we made a few years ago wasn’t great and so we were determined to get it right this time. We’ve had about twenty different writers working on a script and they came up with all kinds of scenarios. One had the team travel back to ancient Egypt and battle a Mummy, then there was The Fantastic Four Vs Dracula and The Fantastic Vs Frankenstein. All good ideas but we thought they lacked originality. My own personal favorite was The Fantastic Four Vs Global Warming. It basically contained lots of scenes of the team destroying China’s industrial sites but the board said the 60 ft Chairman Mao robot that fired laser beams from his eyes was disrespectful and might have an effect on Asian box-office receipts.
I caught the film on TV one night and I saw Murphy playing all these different characters. Then suddenly it came to me. What if we made the Fantastic Four with Eddie playing the entire team?! It has never been done in a comic book movie so in many ways this is an evolution of the genre.
We’re going to get those two guys from Trading Places to make a cameo. You know Don Ameche and Ralph Bellamy. It will be the kind of fun little film reference audiences love.