David Cronenberg On Influencing Josh Trank's 'Fantastic Four'

David Cronenberg isn't a name you'd typically associate with big-budget Marvel adaptations, but Josh Trank made the connection when speaking about his upcoming Fantastic Four. Trank cited the filmmaker as a major influence on his film, specifically referencing Scanners and The Fly.

So how does the idiosyncratic Cronenberg feel about his style getting chewed up by a big studio production? Read the David Cronenberg Fantastic Four quotes after the jump. 

Trank previously told press he saw Fantastic Four as "a Cronenberg-ian science fiction tale," what with all the body horror elements, and that he wanted his film to be a "hard sci-fi take" on the premise. So Collider asked Cronenberg how he felt about his work influencing Trank's Fantastic Four. Here's his response:

It's fine. Once you've contributed your voice to the cinematic conversation, it's out there and it's up for grabs, absolutely. So I don't complain. In fact, I take it as a compliment.

In fact, Cronenberg is just happy Trank is referencing him at all:

When you come up with something original and it really strikes a chord in people, it's going to imitated, it's going to be appropriated, and it's actually kind of nice when someone just flat out admits it. That's actually pretty good. Not everybody does.

The filmmaker additionally points out that this isn't the first time a Hollywood production has appropriated his work — and that he doesn't always get his due credit when that happens. He continued:

As far back as Alien, for example, which totally ripped off things from my movie Shivers – Shivers featured a parasite that lives in your body, bursts out of your chests, jumps onto your face, and jumps down your mouth, and suddenly you see this in a studio film, which was hugely successful, Alien. The writer of the script, Dan O'Bannon, had seen Shivers, we know that he had seen my movie and, shall we say, appropriated it. So this is not new stuff for me.

Any artist as influential as Cronenberg must be used to seeing his influence pop up in strange places. We'll have to wait and see how Trank's Cronenberg-flavored Fantastic Four plays out, but for now you can rest assured that Cronenberg himself sounds cool with it. Fantastic Four opens August 7.