The Deal
New Horizons
After initially approaching Troma impresario Lloyd Kaufman of “The Toxic Avenger” fame — who declined out of a long friendship and loyalty to Stan Lee — Eichinger met with B-movie king Roger Corman, who had made his name on making movies quick and cheap but with an eye for up-and-coming talent. He approached Corman with a deal: Make a “Fantastic Four” movie for $1 million dollars, far more than a typical production from Corman’s New Horizons production outfit … but far, far less than the material actually necessitated.
Corman took the deal, and set out to make the picture very, very quickly. Three weeks before production was scheduled to begin in late December 1992, a casting call went out to agents and talent, from which New Horizons got thousands of responses. Some of the actors that auditioned for roles included Nick Cassavetes, Melora Walters, Patrick Warburton, noted comic book fan Titus Welliver, and even a very pre-Hulk Mark Ruffalo. The final cast consisted of Alex Hyde-White (“Pretty Woman”) as Mr. Fantastic, Rebecca Staab (“Beverly Hills 90210”) as Invisible Woman, Jay Underwood (“Uncle Buck”) as Human Torch, Michael Bailey Smith (“A Nightmare on Elm Street 5: The Dream Child”) as Ben Grimm (with Carl Ciarfalio in the Thing costume), and Joseph Culp (“Iguana”) as Dr. Doom. They would be led by music video helmer turned feature director Oley Sassone (“Bloodfist III: Forced to Fight”) and would all bring a sense of enthusiasm that this could be their big break … despite the many red flags.
New Horizons
By Max Evry/Sept. 22, 2021 2:40 pm EST
Long before Marvel Studios conquered the world with its unique blend of big-budget spectacle and comic book fidelity … before 2000’s “X-Men” and 2002’s “Spider-Man” proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that the Marvel universe was a viable form of movie IP … heck, even before Wesley Snipes ice-skated uphill with the “Blade” movies, there was Roger Corman’s infamous 1994 film “The Fantastic Four.” Didn’t see it? There’s a reason for that.
Hollywood is a sharky town. Always has been. On almost any movie set, large or small, you can always track some kind of shady business dealings or creative book-keeping. But rarely is a movie made to deliberately not be seen, as was the case with “Fantastic Four.” With much of our info taken from the great 2015 documentary “Doomed: The Untold Story of Roger Corman’s The Fantastic Four,” let’s take a look back at one of the sleaziest “major” comic book movie adaptations ever mounted and why it’s such a fascinating story — at least, more so than the film that wound up not playing on screens.
Hollywood is a sharky town. Always has been. On almost any movie set, large or small, you can always track some kind of shady business dealings or creative book-keeping. But rarely is a movie made to deliberately not be seen, as was the case with “Fantastic Four.”
With much of our info taken from the great 2015 documentary “Doomed: The Untold Story of Roger Corman’s The Fantastic Four,” let’s take a look back at one of the sleaziest “major” comic book movie adaptations ever mounted and why it’s such a fascinating story — at least, more so than the film that wound up not playing on screens.
The Not-So-Mighty Marvel Movie Era
Despite a great script from “Back to the Future” writer Bob Gale, a “Doctor Strange” movie continued to languish. The 1989 Dolph Lundgren-led “The Punisher” couldn’t even bring itself to put the dang skull logo on the guy’s shirt, while the less said about Albert Pyun’s 1990 “Captain America” movie the better. Those latter two films had budgets of $9 million and $3 million, respectively, and both went direct-to-video in the US.
But some producers still had faith that the Marvel Universe had enough cultural cache and cinematic possibilities to be viable movie IP. One such producer was German filmmaker Bernd Eichinger, whose Constantin Films had put out such prestigious fare as “The Neverending Story,” “The Name of the Rose” and “Last Exit to Brooklyn.”
The Deal
After initially approaching Troma impresario Lloyd Kaufman of “The Toxic Avenger” fame — who declined out of a long friendship and loyalty to Stan Lee — Eichinger met with B-movie king Roger Corman, who had made his name on making movies quick and cheap but with an eye for up-and-coming talent. He approached Corman with a deal: Make a “Fantastic Four” movie for $1 million dollars, far more than a typical production from Corman’s New Horizons production outfit … but far, far less than the material actually necessitated.
Corman took the deal, and set out to make the picture very, very quickly. Three weeks before production was scheduled to begin in late December 1992, a casting call went out to agents and talent, from which New Horizons got thousands of responses. Some of the actors that auditioned for roles included Nick Cassavetes, Melora Walters, Patrick Warburton, noted comic book fan Titus Welliver, and even a very pre-Hulk Mark Ruffalo. The final cast consisted of Alex Hyde-White (“Pretty Woman”) as Mr. Fantastic, Rebecca Staab (“Beverly Hills 90210”) as Invisible Woman, Jay Underwood (“Uncle Buck”) as Human Torch, Michael Bailey Smith (“A Nightmare on Elm Street 5: The Dream Child”) as Ben Grimm (with Carl Ciarfalio in the Thing costume), and Joseph Culp (“Iguana”) as Dr. Doom. They would be led by music video helmer turned feature director Oley Sassone (“Bloodfist III: Forced to Fight”) and would all bring a sense of enthusiasm that this could be their big break … despite the many red flags.
Corman took the deal, and set out to make the picture very, very quickly. Three weeks before production was scheduled to begin in late December 1992, a casting call went out to agents and talent, from which New Horizons got thousands of responses. Some of the actors that auditioned for roles included Nick Cassavetes, Melora Walters, Patrick Warburton, noted comic book fan Titus Welliver, and even a very pre-Hulk Mark Ruffalo.
The final cast consisted of Alex Hyde-White (“Pretty Woman”) as Mr. Fantastic, Rebecca Staab (“Beverly Hills 90210”) as Invisible Woman, Jay Underwood (“Uncle Buck”) as Human Torch, Michael Bailey Smith (“A Nightmare on Elm Street 5: The Dream Child”) as Ben Grimm (with Carl Ciarfalio in the Thing costume), and Joseph Culp (“Iguana”) as Dr. Doom. They would be led by music video helmer turned feature director Oley Sassone (“Bloodfist III: Forced to Fight”) and would all bring a sense of enthusiasm that this could be their big break … despite the many red flags.
A Doomed Production
Although the rubber Thing costume by Optic Nerve was fairly comics-accurate, the spandex suits with a sewn-on “4” worn by the rest of the stars were more akin to homemade Halloween costumes. The Mr. Fantastic stretch effects were laughable, and the few seconds where Johnny Storm goes full “flame on” in a flying body burn were rendered in the most primitive CGI imaginable. Even the secondary villain Mole Man had to be changed to a generic sewer-dwelling baddie called the Jeweler, played by English thesp Ian Trigger (his final screen performance) in gross troll makeup.
When the ultra-rushed 22-day filming schedule was completed by the end of January 1993, post-production efforts suddenly ground to a halt — much to the puzzlement of the director, Oley Sassone. Pretty soon, with Corman’s company going radio silent and withholding funds, visual effects and other post-production efforts were being handled in a clandestine way.
Sassone and his editors were given elements under different movie titles so they could finish the film under-the-radar. Even the film’s composers, brothers David and Eric Wurst (“Bloodfist IV: Die Trying”), put in $6000 on their own dime to hire a 48-piece orchestra for the soundtrack. A few new bridging scenes were shot by Sassone on-the-fly, including some shots of the Thing on the city streets that were filmed without permits or even lighting.
Wanting to get the word out, some cast members used thousands of dollars of their own money to hire a publicist and began making appearances at San Diego Comic-Con and elsewhere to meet fans and get the word out. Film Threat’s Chris Gore had been embedded on set as a reporter, and wrote a cover story for the magazine. But all these publicity efforts would be in vain.
“It is not only in the works, it’s just about finished. It’ll be released sometime, I think, at the end of this year. I’m not expecting too much of it. It’s the last movie to be made that we at Marvel had no control over. Our lawyers just gave the rights to Roger Corman to do the movie. There will be no other projects like that. Everything after that we’re doing ourselves.”
The Deception Revealed
Besides the money Eichinger was given in cash, Roger Corman received a check for $1 million to hand over all materials, including the negative, which was reportedly destroyed. It is the only film to date that Corman made and did not release. Corman and others at New Horizons have said that they had every intention of releasing the film before their big payout, and attest that they were not in on the scheme to intentionally never release the movie. Sassone met with Eichinger personally, and although he was given no extra compensation for his efforts, he was eventually recommended by Eichinger to direct the Czech TV movie “Heimliche Zeugen (Secret Witness).”
