BABY DRIVER Director Edgar Wright Explains Why He Felt He Needed To Depart From Marvel's ANT-MAN
In the wake of Phil Lord and Chris Miller departing Han Solo, Edgar Wright shares some new details on his decision to walk away from Marvel's Ant-Man, which he spent a very long time working on...
On the heels of the news that Phil Lord and Chris Miller had been fired from the young Han Solo movie for not seeing eye-to-eye with Lucasfilm's Kathleen Kennedy, we have some new details on another infamous incident of a director clashing with a studio.
Edgar Wright hadn't actually begun shooting Ant-Man when he departed the project, but that doesn't mean he hadn't dedicated a massive amount of time and energy to the film. In fact, Wright had reportedly spent years working on the script alongside Attack the Block creator Joe Cornish, and had even begun to cast some of the main roles before things began to go pear shaped.
At the time, we were hit with the standard citing of "creative differences", but during an interview with Variety Wright opened up a little more about what went down:
“I think the most diplomatic answer is I wanted to make a Marvel movie but I don’t think they really wanted to make an Edgar Wright movie. It was a really heartbreaking decision to have to walk away after having worked on it for so long, because me and Joe Cornish in some form—it’s funny some people say, ‘Oh they’ve been working on it for eight years’ and that was somewhat true, but in that time I had made three movies so it wasn’t like I was working on it full time. But after The World’s End I did work on it for like a year, I was gonna make the movie.
But then I was the writer-director on it and then they wanted to do a draft without me, and having written all my other movies, that’s a tough thing to move forward thinking if I do one of these movies I would like to be the writer-director,” Wright said. “Suddenly becoming a director for hire on it, you’re sort of less emotionally invested and you start to wonder why you’re there, really.”
Peyton Reed stepped in and the movie turned out pretty good (I still maintain it's a little overrated, personally), but to this day fans still wonder what Edgar Wright's Ant-Man would have looked like.
What do you guys make of Wright's comments? Sound off below.
About The Author:
Mark Cassidy is a writer, photographer, amateur filmmaker, and Rotten Tomatoes-approved critic from Dublin, Ireland.