Josh Trank feared for his life after casting Michael B. Jordan in Fantastic Four

Josh Trank feared for his life after casting Michael B. Jordan as Johnny Storm in Fantastic Four.

In a new interview with gaming website Polygon, the director discussed working on the troubled 2015 comic book adaptation, which also starred Miles Teller as Reed Richards, Kate Mara as Sue Storm, and Jamie Bell as The Thing.

Noting that he fought with bosses at Fox to cast Jordan as Storm, who transforms into the Human Torch after being exposed to cosmic rays, Trank also revealed that he was left on edge at one point during the shoot after he read posts on IMDb message boards from disgruntled fans who threatened to shoot him over the news the Creed star had landed the coveted role.

"I was so f**king paranoid during that shoot," he confessed, adding that he slept with a gun during production. "If someone came into my house, I would have ended their f**king life. When you're in a headspace where people want to get you, you think, 'I'm going to defend myself.'"

Trank also claimed he was left out of overseeing reshoots on the highly anticipated reboot and that the film's ending was changed after studio bosses were unimpressed with the dark tone.

"It was like being castrated," the 36-year-old commented of watching reshoots that were overseen by producers Simon Kinberg and Hutch Parker.

Elsewhere in the interview, Trank explained it was his bad experience making Fantastic Four that led to him quitting the standalone Star Wars movie about Boba Fett that he was due to direct.

"I quit because I knew I was going to be fired if I didn't quit," he recalled, adding that he believed Lucasfilm's Kathleen Kennedy was about to fire him anyway.