When Edgar Wright left ‘Ant-Man’ over creative differences, there were a number of directors in line to helm the long-gestating Marvel film. Eventually, Peyton Reed landed the gig, but at one point ‘Anchorman’ filmmaker Adam McKay was next in line for the director’s chair. Unfortunately, prior commitments kept him from overseeing the introduction of Hank Pym and Scott Lang into the Marvel Cinematic Universe. However, McKay was still able to contribute to the movie by taking a pass at the script with former collaborator and star of the film Paul Rudd. In doing that work for Marvel Studios, he remained fresh in the company’s mind and it looks like they’re looking at him for to fill void in one of the upcoming Phase Three films.
After Adam McKay completed his work on ‘Ant-Man’ late last year, he revealed that he was in talks with Marvel to potentially direct something in the future. Now, according to Kevin Feige during an interview with Collider, those talks are still ongoing and McKay is in consideration for just about everything Marvel has planned:
“Adam McKay is in the running for everything. Adam McKay is a great, great writer and director. He did an amazing pass on the ‘Ant-Man’ draft with Paul Rudd for us, and I didn’t know him before then. And we got to know him through that and liked him very much, and have met with him a number of times trying to find something else, so we’ve talked about a lot of characters with him.”
With that being said, what is left for McKay to direct in Phase Three? Scott Derrickson is working with the Sorcerer Supreme on ‘Doctor Strange’, James Gunn is returning for ‘Guardians of the Galaxy 2’, and The Russos are handling both ‘Captain America: Civil War’ and the epic two-parter ‘Avengers: Infinity War’. That leaves the rebooted ‘Spider-Man’ solo film, ‘Thor: Ragnarok’, ‘Black Panther’, ‘Captain Marvel’, and ‘Inhumans’.
I suspect that Drew Goddard will have something to do with Spidey since he left ‘Daredevil’ to work on something related to the web-slinger and rumors say that the House of Ideas is eyeing a female director to bring Carol Danvers into the MCU, so that’s two more off the list. Of course, there is an off chance that he could be working on ‘Iron Fist’ or ‘The Defenders’ on Netflix, but that seems like an unlikely option. Previous reports have attached McKay to the tale of Black Bolt and the Inhuman Royal Family, which makes the 2019 film the leading contender, although anything can happen at this stage in the game.
Which Marvel Studios production do you think Adam McKay should direct? Do you see the primarily comedic filmmaker surprising True Believers in the same way that Anthony and Joe Russo did with ‘Captain America: The Winter Soldier’? Sound off in the comments.
