By now, we're sure you're all familiar with the story of filmmaker Edgar Wright walking away from Marvel Studios' Ant-Man. He spent years slowly developing the movie, but by the time he was ready to begin work, the MCU had completely changed.
Wright's standalone superhero movie suddenly had a much bigger world to fit into, and despite getting far enough along to cast Paul Rudd and Evangeline Lilly, he ultimately decided not to move forward with Ant-Man. Peyton Reed was tapped to replace him, and the 2015 blockbuster ended up being a moderate critical and commercial hit.
Reed's Ant-Man utilised many of Wright's ideas, and there was a noticeable dip in quality with Ant-Man and The Wasp, and a huge drop when Ant-Man and The Wasp: Quantumania was released at the start of 2023.
Speaking with Josh Horowitz, Wright was asked if he'd be open to working with James Gunn and DC Studios, given the co-CEOs' comments about being filmmaker-first.
"I don't know. I think, again, it's all based on the title," he said. "I think it's something where...when those things have come up and Ant-Man, unfortunately, fell into it as well, but the reason I wanted to do that in the first place is because I was inspired by the people who got to do the first of something and set the pace."
"[1989's Batman], when it came out, was both the biggest movie of the year so far and also so idiosyncratic and specific to Tim Burton," Wright continued. "It was incredibly quirky for a big studio movie, and you felt that when Sam Raimi did Spider-Man and when Chris Nolan did Batman Begins."
"Without going into the weeds and breaking my NDA, the reason I had to walk away from Ant-Man is that by the time I started doing it, which was 8 years after I started writing it, now there was a formula," he recalled, elaborating on his decision to walk away from the MCU. "Not just in terms of continuity within the movies, but also a house style and a way of shooting things."
"And all the things that are less interesting to me. There's a lot of second unit stuff and a VFX unit. I knew I couldn't make that movie in the same way I'd made Scott Pilgrim vs. the World. I was like, 'Bye!'"
When Wright left Ant-Man (and it's hard to blame him, seeing as his script was changed significantly by in-house writers), it came as a huge blow to Marvel Studios, and Kevin Feige scrambled to find someone who could replace The Running Man helmer.
However, despite any bad blood at the time, they've since buried the hatchet. "I should say, me and Kevin Feige have made up in recent years," Wright confirmed. "When I did that Empire Magazine, I got him to do a piece for it and it was actually the first email we'd had together in 6 years. It was actually sweet that we started talking again."
"I haven't seen him in person since, but [I'll give him a hug] when I see him," he added with a laugh.
We wouldn't bank on Wright working in the MCU or DCU, though the latter does seem the more likely of the two, seeing as Gunn is happy to greenlight standalone "Elseworlds" projects.
You can hear more from Wright in the player below.