After facing a slew of backlash over 2015's Fantastic Four, Josh Trank decided to speak on how the financial and critical disappointment influenced his crime biopic Capone.
In an interview with Variety, Trank spoke on how the failure of Fantastic Four led him to find kinship with legendary crime boss Al Capone. "While I was sitting out there with a few months of just no activity and just being immobile and doing a lot of therapy, this seed of an idea popped into my head based on all of my own reading about Al Capone from when I was a kid," he recalled. "I knew about that time in his life after he was released from Alcatraz when he was suffering from neurosyphilis. He was just in his own backyard in Palm Island smoking cigars and not really interacting with other people. He was so far away from being the reigning king of Chicago and one of the most powerful and feared men in the world."
The Fantastic Four reboot was plagued with rumored problems before and after it was released. There were talks of Trank and original screenwriter Jeremy Slater clashing over creative visions, leading Slater to leave. Casting choices, Trank's rumored erratic behavior on set and the studio-mandated reshoots led to all led to audiences becoming skeptical. Many critics and fans alike have called the film the worst superhero film of the past decade.
He went into detail about how the idea became the upcoming biopic. He stated, "In my head, I just wondered what would it have been like for Al Capone to end his life being so far removed from the Al Capone that he got to be for awhile. What would it be like if he flipped on the radio and heard a fictionalized radio play about Al Capone? How would he have felt about that? That’s where it came from."
"I realized it was an important story for me to engage in as a human being and as a writer, because I had so much I wanted to explore with it," he concluded the conversation. "The more I started writing it, the more I realized that this is a story about an iconic figure in history, seen through a completely different window."
Directed by Josh Trank, Capone stars Tom Hardy, Linda Cardellini, Jack Lowden, Matt Dillon, Noel Fisher, Kyle MacLachlan, Katherine Narducci, Tilda Del Toro, Mason Guccione and Caiden Acurio. It is scheduled to premiere on May 12 on VOD.