The Fantastic Four—Mr. Fantastic, the Invisible Woman, the Human Torch, and the Thing—originally appeared in an eponymous 1961 comic book released by Marvel Comics. They were popular for decades and, in 2005, 20th Century Fox released a movie about the heroic quartet, which earned over $330 million at the box office with a $100 million budget. A sequel, Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer, hit theaters two years later, earning $290 million at the box office with a budget of $130 million. Despite the apparently massive amounts of money these movies made, studio execs were disappointed and put the franchise on hold for nearly a decade. (A rebooted series was planned for 2015 release.)
There’s another Fantastic Four movie—but you’ve probably never seen it. Technically speaking, it came out in 1994, but it never hit theaters nor had a home video release. To make matters even stranger, the film’s producers didn’t care at all. In fact, they were probably happy.
In the 1980s, Marvel Comics wasn’t yet set up to produce movies. The company ended up licensing some of their characters to various movie studios—that’s why Spider-Man movies are produced by Sony and the X-Men films are distributed by 20th Century Fox. (Marvel has retained some rights—most notably to Iron Man, Captain America, the Incredible Hulk, and the rest of the Avengers—and will regain the rights to their licensed characters at some point, but probably not too soon.) The Fantastic Four were one of the franchises licensed out during that boom period. In 1983, a production company named Neue Constantin purchased the option to create a Fantastic Four movie for what is rumored to be about $250,000.
That option was set to expire on December 31, 1992, and as that date approached, Neue Constantin was nowhere close to having a summer blockbuster ready—a week before that date, they hadn’t even started production. Neue Constantin approached Marvel for an extension, but was rebuffed. So they came up with another idea: Make a really terrible movie on the cheap.
The agreement between Marvel and Neue Constantin allowed the latter to retain the rights to the characters so long as they produced a movie before the date in question. The theory behind this ancillary right makes sense—if the production company makes a smash hit, they should be able to produce a sequel. Neue Constantin, many would later argue, used this as a loophole. In September 1992, they brought on a low-budget producer who could quickly churn out a Fantastic Four movie with a budget of only $1 million, chump change by industry standards. Production began on December 28, 1992, a few days before the deadline, and wrapped a month later. The film was slated to come out in late 1993 or 1994 but was scrapped before it hit theaters.
The reasons why are unclear. Stan Lee, the legend behind Marvel, claims that Neue Constantin never intended to release the film—by simply creating the movie, the production company was able to maintain its hold on the Fantastic Four franchise for years to come. Neue Constantin’s executives tell another story, asserting that Marvel executive Avi Arad caught wind of the low-budget flick and, wanting to protect the Fantastic Four brand, bought all the rights and ordered all copies—including the film negatives—destroyed. (If true, he failed; two decades later, you can find a bootlegged copy on YouTube.)
Either way, Neue Constantin came out ahead. The company retained the rights to the Final Four franchise. If you look at the credits for both the 2005 and 2007 Fantastic Four films, you’ll see the name “Constantin Film”—Neue Constantin’s new name—as one of the studios involved in the productions.
On November 17, 1978, on the heels of the box office success of Star Wars, CBS aired the first official Star Wars spinoff, called “The Star Wars Holiday Special.” The ninety-seven-minute show was a weird variety show–style disaster, which was nearly universally panned. In response to the negative reviews, the powers that be decided to never re-air it or release it on home video. Thanks to the magic of the Internet, though, you can find a copy online pretty easily. (But, as someone who has seen it, take my word for it: Don’t bother.)