When it was announced that Josh Trank would be stepping away from his STAR WARS ANTHOLOGY film, rumours were abound as to just what led to Trank's departure; in fact, they were were so prevalent that Josh Trank felt the need to publicly address his reasons in an interview with The LA Times. Trank knew that his decision was going to be questioned, but the director, who called the choice "the hardest decision I've ever had to make in my life," wasn't prepared for the amount of fervor the news would bring.
At first I was like, ‘I’m just not going to say anything because it will blow over. But I was shocked – it just hasn’t blown over. People get so excited to raise their pitchforks. I knew that this was going to be questioned and it was going to come under skepticism as to why I left Star Wars.
The rumours surrounding the reason behind Trank's departure, which I won't repeat here, came as a surprise to Trank who stated that "none of those facts were true – and any of the facts that were true were spun in such a maliciously wrong way." Trank added:
It feels sometimes like I’m living in a Paddy Chayefsky script or something like that. Every misconception that could possibly be made about this has been made to a hilariously satirical degree. And it’s people who haven’t met me before. If they met me – I don’t know, I feel like I’m a pretty harmless person.
As a result of the intense public scrutiny he's received, it should come as no surprise that Trank's next project will be one that comes without the baggage that STAR WARS and FANTASTIC FOUR bring:
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.
A new director for the second STAR WARS ANTHOLOGY film has yet to have been announced, but the project is still scheduled for a 2018 release. Meanwhile FANTASTIC FOUR will open in theaters on August 7, 2015.