Why? It’s a whole thing. In 1983 Stan Lee sold the rights to German producer Bernd Eichinger, who went on to make The Neverending Story, Resident Evil, and Downfall, the much-memed Adolf Hitler biopic. But back then, superhero movies were less appealing to studios than, say, wacky comedies about literal sex crimes so Eichinger couldn’t get anyone to make the film. With the rights set to expire, his only chance to retain said investment was to make … something. So he approached B-movie legend Roger Corman in November 1992 and proposed throwing together a dirt-cheap Fantastic Four movie — one that would have to start shooting by December 31 in order for his plan to work. They ended up rolling cameras on December 26 so it wouldn’t be too “obvious” what they were up to.
So Corman took a script that was written for a $30 million budget and made it for just $1 million which, unsurprisingly, didn’t go great. Sadly, a lot of the folks involved with the movie worked super hard on the doomed project; the cast (who weren’t wise to the scheme) spent “months promoting the still-in- postproduction film at comic-book shops and sci-fi conventions,” the director booked a premiere screening that would benefit children’s charities, and the composers invested $6,000 of their own money recording the score and, according to the director, they “never got paid.”
While there seems to be some debate as to whether or not the film was ever intended to be released, then-Chief Creative Officer for Marvel, Avi Arad, “bought the film for a couple million dollars in cash and burned it” then “ordered all prints destroyed” despite the fact that he had never actually watched it, something you can do right now for free on YouTube any time you want.
According to Corman, Eichinger then took the Fantastic Four to Fox with machinations to release the cheap-o version as a prequel once the big-budget one proved to be a hit — something Fox caught wind of, leading them to add “a rider in the contract that he would not release the $1 million picture.”
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