Late Friday afternoon before people left work for the holiday weekend, Marvel Studios and Edgar Wright announced that the filmmaker would no longer be attached to ‘Ant-Man’ as it’s director. Despite the amicable split, this devastating blow came as a huge surprise considering that he had been working on this movie since 2006 before ‘Iron Man’ or the Marvel Cinematic Universe was a thing. The statement listed “differences in their vision of the film” as the reasoning behind this move, but of course there’s more to this story than the two sides have disclosed publically. Thus the rumor mill has started turning and we have a few of the big ones.
According to Latino Review, the real reason behind Wright’s departure is less benign than the official statement makes it sound. First, they denounce the rumors that the creative mind behind ‘Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World’ and the Cornetto Trilogy was fired for being behind schedule. The false reports said that “production has been bleeding money for a month and Marvel got fed up with him and they lost their confidence in his ability to manage a production of this size”, but this is apparently untrue due to the production’s hiatus thanks to rewrites that were taking place. It’s these rewrites that are said to be the main reason for the changing of the guard.
Basically, Marvel gave Wright and Joe Cornish major notes on the script a few months ago “about the core morality of the piece, must include franchise characters, etc”. The pair completed two drafts in an attempt to answer the notes without compromising their vision, but the studio decided to hand off the script to “two very low credit writers” instead, which resulted in a “poorer, homogenized” script that was nowhere near the original vision for the film. After reading this version of the script and meeting with Marvel, Wright ultimately decided to walk away.
We don’t know for sure if this is what actually went down, especially considering that Kevin Feige recently stated that they “changed, frankly some of the MCU to accommodate” Wright’s version of ‘Ant-Man’, but if this rumor does turn out to be the case, then good for Wright for sticking to his guns. After spending the better part of a decade working together on this film, it would be a huge bummer for massive script changes to derail the whole thing. But above all, even if this rumor doesn’t turn out to be true, it’s still the fans that are being deprived of a Marvel film from one of the most unique minds in the industry today.
What do you think about this rumor regarding the reasoning behind Edgar Wright’s ‘Ant-Man’ departure? Do you really think that Marvel Studios has had such a change of heart over the story after all these years? Share your thoughts and theories in the comments below.
‘Ant-Man’ starring Michael Douglas and Paul Rudd hits theaters on July 17, 2015.
