Jon Watts is sharing a relatable truth: Sometimes directors get burnt out, too. The filmmaker, who singlehandedly revived the “Spider-Man” IP with his Tom Holland-led features, said during a recent masterclass at the Mediterrane Film Festival (via THR) that he exited fellow MCU project “The Fantastic Four” because he was just “out of gas.”
Watts was announced announced as the director of a new “Fantastic Four” movie in 2020. He parted ways with the project in 2022; Marvel Studios president Kevin Feige said at the time that the studio was “supportive of his reasons for stepping away.”
Now, Watts is explaining why he dropped out of directing “The Fantastic Four: First Steps” (Matt Shakman is helming the feature, which will be released in theaters on July 25). “I was out of gas,” Watts 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.”
He added, “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.”
Watts cited that there was an “emotional strain” on him after filming “Spider-Man: No Way Home” amid the pandemic. That added to him feeling depleted prior to “The Fantastic Four.”
“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 postproduction process was very difficult,” he said. “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.”
As for Shakman’s verison, Watts said, “It’s going to be totally surreal experience for me to go and watch that movie.”
After leaving “The Fantastic Four,” Watts went on to direct “Wolfs” for Apple, in addition to co-creating the “Star Wars” series “Skeleton Crew” for Disney.