Fox is to reboot the Fantastic Four franchise under the supervision of I Am Legend and Jonah Hex producer Akiva Goldman, with Heroes co-executive producer Michael Green writing the script, according to Variety.

Fox's unusual hold over the Marvel-originated franchise means that it can't sit endlessly on the property and wait for the memory of the two Gruffudd/Alba movies (in 2005 and 2007) to recede before tackling a new FF movie.

It's not the first time that legal issues have advanced a Fantastic Four movie up the schedule either - Roger Corman's famously awful £1 million 1994 adaptation was made in order to retain rights in the property, and in fact 20th Century Fox has similar 'use-em-or-lose'em' obligations with franchises such as X-Men, Silver Surfer and Daredevil, the latter two scheduled for their own imminent Fox reboots (the Silver Surfer having featured in the 2nd Fantastic Four movie in 2007).

Personally I think the two recent movies, starring Ioan Gruffudd, Jessica Alba, Chris Evans and Michael Chiklis had a lot going for them, and that it would be enough to write a third movie in the franchise that simply had a better script and a bit more respect for the original stories and characters (no more bendy dancing from Reed Richards, for instance).

Variety