Roger Corman's Lost 'Fantastic Four' Movie Gets Its Own Documentary: Watch the 'Doomed!' Trailer
Before last year’s disastrous Fantastic Four reboot, before the critically reviled but lucrative 2005 version, there was another, even more notorious Fantastic Four movie. The 1994 Fantastic Four, produced by B-movie king Roger Corman, was never released in theaters, but has made the rounds among comics fans as a bootleg for years. Now, a documentary, Doomed! The Untold Story of Roger Corman’s Fantastic Four — watch the trailer above — explores the dubious reasons why the film was made, and why this particular clash between Dr. Doom, The Thing, Mister Fantastic, the Invisible Woman, and Sue Storm never saw the light of day.
In 2005, legendary Marvel creator Stan Lee dished the dirt on the lost Fantastic Four movie with Los Angeles magazine. The film literally was never meant to be released: It was created on a minimal budget, strictly so that the producer could retain the rights to the property. “The tragic thing,” said Lee, “is that the people involved with the film were not aware that that movie was never supposed to be shown to anybody.” In other words: the crew, the actors, and most people involved assumed they were making a splashy Marvel movie that would be enjoyed by audiences, and were shocked to see the film vanish into thin air after 21 days of shooting. Corman has called it “the strangest film production I’ve ever been involved with in my life.” With the upcoming release of Doomed! on-demand (Oct. 11) and DVD (Dec. 20), fans may finally get the whole story.
Watch the 2015 ‘Fantastic Four’ trailer with filmmaker commentary:
