Star Wars: Director Josh Trank on why he quit

Chronicle and Fanastic Four reboot director Josh Trank was announced last year as the director of the second planned Star Wars Anthologymovie, due in 2018. Yet earlier this year, he departed the project, and a rumor soon sprung up that he'd actually been fired from the film.

"At first I was like, ‘I’m just not going to say anything because it will blow over,'" Trank told Hero Complex. "But I was shocked – it just hasn’t blown over. People get so excited to raise their pitchforks."

So what actually happened?

"It was the hardest decision I've ever had to make in my life," Trank said, of quitting Star Wars. To the allegation that he was fired, and that he had behaved erratically on the set of Fantastic Four, Trank firmly stated "none of those facts were true - and any of the facts that were true were spin in such a maliciously wrong way."

The real reason he walked away? “I want to do something original after this because I’ve been living under public scrutiny, as you’ve seen, for the last four years of my life. And it’s not healthy for me right now in my life. I want to do something that’s below the radar."

Fantastic Four producer Simon Kinberg added that "I’ve been around some version of this for a long time", noting that it was Josh Trank's vision that ultimately convinced up to sign up to Fantastic Four. "This, I would say, is particularly cruel. I haven’t really seen this level of vehemence against a filmmaker. And it’s surreal and unfair."

Fantastic Four finally lands in cinemas on August 7th, when we get to see just what the actual film at the end of all of this turns up like. Meanwhile, a new director has yet to be found for the second Star Wars Anthology movie.

Hero Complex