The two versions of Fantastic Four produced by Fox couldn’t be less alike – one is lighter-hearted, family-friendly fare and the other was supposed to be a gritty reboot of Marvel’s First Family. Fans may be able to tell the difference between them, then, but HBO Max is having more trouble.
2005’s Fantastic Four, directed by Tim Story and starring Ioan Gruffudd, Jessica Alba, Chris Evans and Michael Chiklis, has just gone up on the steaming service but fans have noticed that HBO Max is incorrectly using images from the 2015 reboot for it. Rookie move, HBO!
HBO Max has accidentally put the FANT4STIC artwork on the 2005 FANTASTIC FOUR movie 😂 pic.twitter.com/iWGzVD8ZKk
— DiscussingFilm (@DiscussingFilm) July 1, 2020
In actual fact, 2015’s Fantastic Four – AKA Fant4stic – is available on Disney Plus. The Josh Trank effort, starring Miles Teller, Kate Mara, Michael B. Jordan and Jamie Bell, was quietly slipped on the service without any fanfare late last month. This was a pretty big deal, though, as it’s the first Fox-Marvel film to appear on the site.
In contrast, the 2005 version has been proudly announced to be coming to D+ as part of their big Summer Movie Nights schedule. The flick will land on the Mouse House’s service on August 28th. It’s unknown whether both platforms will share the rights to stream it though or if it’ll be removed from HBO Max next month, almost as quickly as it arrived.
Of the two Fantastic Four films, the 2005 iteration is definitely more popular, with those who grew up with it and its 2007 sequel Rise of the Silver Surfer having a lot of fondness for both films despite their many flaws. So, sticking the 2005 artwork on the Josh Trank effort we could understand. Doing it the other way around though, as in this case, is just dumb on HBO’s part as they’re only putting people off. No doubt this error will be fixed now that fans have been mocking them for it.
