Jon Watts has finally shared why he dropped out of directing Fantastic Four: First Steps.
The Spider-Man: No Way Home director quit the project in 2022 and explained that the “emotional strain” of pandemic-related fatigue meant he had felt he had no option but to quit.
According to The Hollywood Reporter, he explained during a storytelling masterclass at the Mediterranean: “The emotional strain of having to go through all of those COVID protocols while also trying to make something creative while also trying to make sure that your cast and crew were all safe — literally, people could’ve died if you did things wrong — that and the post-production process was very difficult.
“When you’re doing [visual effects work], there’s a whole international component to it where you’re using vendors from all over the world, and the supply chain had been interrupted because of COVID. It was really hard to get effects done in a traditional way.”
He had committed to Fantastic Four: First Steps between the second and third Spider-Man movies but when the time came to get started, he was “out of gas.”
He said: “The COVID layer on top of making a giant movie layer, I knew I didn’t have what it would’ve taken to make that movie great. I was just out of steam, so I just needed to take some time to recover. Everyone at Marvel totally understood. They had been through it with me as well, so they knew how hard and draining that experience has been; in the end, very satisfying, but at some point, if you can’t do it at the level that you feel like you need to for it to be great, then it’s better to not do it.”
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