‘Fantastic Four’ Gets Director, ‘Daredevil’ Loses One

20th Century Fox is helping us get into the Comic-Con spirit with some big news on two of its Marvel superhero properties.

Firstly, Chronicle director Josh Trank will officially direct the studio's reboot of Fantastic Four, a job got on the wish list for earlier this year. Trank has been attached to potential comic book adaptation Red Star, potential video game adaptation Shadow of the Colossus, and even Sony's Venom spinoff, but Deadline has heard that bringing Mr. Fantastic, The Invisible Woman, The Human Torch and The Thing back to the big screen will be his next endeavor.


This will be Fox's next big superhero film after The Wolverine and the sequel to X-Men: First Class, which are slated for July 2013 and 2014 respectively.

Secondly, David Slade (The Twilight Saga: Eclipse, 30 Days of Night) has left development of another Fox superhero reboot — Daredevil. As with Fantastic Four, Fox must put a film into production in order to retain the rights to the character, and Deadline has learned that if the Daredevil reboot doesn't enter production by the fall, those rights will in fact revert back to Marvel.


Slade, who was brought on to direct in March 2011, would have been unable to meet that deadline due to his commitment to NBC's Hannibal Lecter pilot, Hannibal. Expect Fox to replace him very quickly, as it already has a script it likes in place.

In other Fox movie news, Attack the Block director Joe Cornish has been tapped to direct a film called Rust, a sci-fi family adventure film in the vein of E.T. based on a graphic novel by Royden Lepp. The film centers on a struggling farm family that encounters a mysterious, life-changing robot. The Devil Wears Prada writer Aline Brosh McKenna has written the treatment.