Columbus says he was fired from Fox's Fantastic Four over Kirby look

Chris Columbus, the director best known for Home Alone and the first two Harry Potter films, says he was dismissed from 20th Century Fox’s original Fantastic Four project in the late 1990s after offering creative notes that he says studio executives did not welcome. Columbus told the Fade to Black podcast that he had worked on a script and was producing the first film when he met with the director to suggest the film’s conceptual art should evoke Jack Kirby and the Silver Age of Marvel. He said he was fired on his drive home after being told he had "too much of an opinion."

Columbus remains credited as an executive producer on Fox’s 2005 Fantastic Four and its 2007 sequel, Fantastic Four Rise of the Silver Surfer, but he said he had no involvement in the completed films. He also recounted earlier efforts to realize Ben Grimm, the Thing, through visual effects rather than practical costuming, a position he has discussed in prior interviews. At the time he was actively pursuing superhero projects, including scripting work on Daredevil and interest in Spider Man, but Columbus said the experience with Fantastic Four and the subsequent rise of other filmmakers in the genre cooled...