Miles Teller Blames 1 Important Person for 2015 Fantastic Four Flop

Ten years after Fantastic Four flopped at the box office, Miles Teller is pointing the blame at one “important” and unnamed person.

“It’s unfortunate for that [film], because so many people worked so hard on that movie,” Teller, 38, said during the Tuesday, November 11, episode of Andy Cohen Live on SiriusXM’s Radio Andy.

The actor confessed, “And honestly, maybe there was one really important person who kind of f***ed it all up.”

While Teller didn’t name any names, he hinted that the actors weren’t the problem.

“As a young actor at that time, it’s like, ‘Alright, if you want to be taken seriously as a leading man, you got to get on this superhero train.’ That was our chance,” Teller recalled. “And the casting, I thought, was spectacular. I love all those actors.”

2015’s Fantastic Four starred Teller, Kate Mara, Michael B. Jordan and Jamie Bell as superheroes Reed Richards, Sue Storm, Johnny Storm and Ben Grimm. (A previous Fantastic Four film in 2005 starred Ioan Gruffudd, Jessica Alba, Chris Evans and Michael Chiklis.)

Despite loving his costars, Teller told Andy Cohen on Tuesday that he was aware the film wasn’t good before it was officially released.

“When I first saw the movie, I remember talking to one of the studio heads and said, ‘I think we’re in trouble,’” he revealed.

Teller’s Fantastic Four was directed by Josh Trank and grossed $168 million on a $120 million budget. Because of the poor reception at the box office, the Marvel characters were not asked back for a sequel, as many had hoped.

The characters were eventually revived this year for The Fantastic Four: First Steps with Pedro Pascal, Vanessa Kirby, Joseph Quinn and Ebon Moss-Bachrach as the leads.

Amid criticism over the 2015 film, Trank, 41, wrote a review for the movie via Letterboxd, in which he praised the cast.

“Movie review: Great cast. Everyone in the film is a great actor, and overall there is a movie in there, somewhere,” he wrote in November 2019. “And that cast deserves to be in THAT movie. Everyone who worked on Fant4stic clearly wanted to be making THAT movie. But … ultimately … It wasn’t.”

Trank confessed that he couldn’t “tell” whether he made a movie the actors “deserved to be in.”

“What I can tell is there are TWO different movies in one movie competing to be that movie. Is there a #releasethetrankcut? Doesn’t matter,” the director explained. “I’m not Zack Snyder. Zack Snyder is a storied, iconic, legendary filmmaker who has been knocking it out of the f***ing park since I was in high school. Me? Then? I was 29 years old, making my 2nd film, in a situation more complicated than anything a 2nd time filmmaker should’ve walked into.”

Trank noted that even with the disastrous outcome he doesn’t “regret any of it,” calling Fantastic Four “a part of me.”

Teller, for his part, has been honest about the negative response the film has garnered over the years, telling Newsweek in November 2016, “Even though it was critically thrashed, I don’t see that as a scarlet letter on me as an actor.”

The Top Gun: Maverick star explained, “Me, Mike, Kate and Jamie — all fairly young actors — were the leads of a $150 million movie. At the time I filmed it, I think I had been in the business five years. Five years [in] to have that opportunity, it’s not something I feel ashamed of.”

Teller continued, “I don’t look at my experience on Fantastic Four any differently than I look at other movies that I’ve done that have been critically praised.”

The actor added that he knew “for a fact” that the cast “really enjoyed working with each other and we all wanted to make something great.”

Looking back, Teller told the outlet you “realize that you have little control” over the creative direction and the public’s reception of the final product.

Despite negative reviews, Teller said he wasn’t ruling out a return to the Fantastic Four universe “if they brought a pretty good script and the same actors were involved.”

“I think all of us would certainly be open to it,” he said of a possible sequel.