Things have been rather quiet on the production front for Marvel’s “Ant-Man”. The last time we checked in since Edgar Wright stepped down as the director, all sorts of wild rumors started flying around. The last big corridor stories that surfaced, echoed whispers of new screenwriters and possible villains to be expected. The studio was extremely quiet about the whole creative team drama until now. Marvel’s head Kevin Feige finally broke the ice and addressed the concerns in a very lengthy interview with IGN.
Feige insists that new director Peyton Reed has been in talks to tackle Marvel projects for years now. He also says that Wright’s replacement “is someone that I’ve been a fan of for a long time”. Reed was earmarked to take on projects but negotiations always fell apart. We have seen so much support for Wright’s vision and his efforts to bring the project this far, it seems that all will be laid to waste if someone else is to take over the helm and start shooting from the hip. Feige reassures fans of Wright’s work that Marvel is doing everything in their power to ensure we will be getting the best possible big screen adaptation.
“Ant-Man” is set to be released on July 17, 2015.
Let’s jump into the details:
He spoke about Marvel’’s relationship with Reed:
“People may not remember, though probably your readers remember, that he was attached to ‘Fantastic Four’ more than 10 years ago. We spent a lot of time together … and I got along with Peyton very, very well and he had awesome ideas and an awesome vision for the movie, and for various reasons he ended up leaving that movie…”
Reed’s past projects and opportunities missed:
“He’s come in to meet on a lot of our movies over the years, in particular ‘Guardians’ [of the Galaxy]. He had a lot of awesome things to say on ‘Guardians’. But James [Gunn] had a slightly more solid take that was of interest to us. But Peyton was always on our lists, and so when this happened and Edgar [Wright] said ‘Not for me,’ we met with a handful of people, but Peyton was always one that I thought would be great.”
Edgar Wright
Marvel’s head also commented on the handover to Reed:
“It was not a slam-dunk that he would just step into it and do it. He wanted to be sure that he wasn’t just inheriting something or following someone else’s lead. Or wasn’t inheriting something that the evil studio had watered down to be something bad.”
“I kept saying, ‘You can either read what’s online, or come in and talk to us and look at all this stuff.’ He looked at everything, he talked with us, and he said ‘Number one, I agree with the direction you’re going in. And number two, I can add to it.’ And he has – the movie is in as good a shape as it’s ever been right now.”
Feige stressed that although the script has undergone rewrites it’s still in line with the draft first written by Wright and Joe Cornish:
“It’s still very much in the spirit of what Edgar’s original pitch was and the entire template of the movie is what Edgar set out and originally came and pitched us maybe eight years ago now. But it’s on its way to being the absolute best version of what that movie could have been.“
Peyton Reed
Comic book geeks are still waiting in anticipation for the storyline to be revealed ever since the announcement that Paul Rudd will take on the role as Scott Lang, and Michael Douglas will take on the role as Hang Pym, the inventor of Ant-Man’s shrinking particles and equipment. The only logical take on all this to understand why we will have two protagonists in the superhero flick is to assume that Rudd’s Scott Lang will take on the role as “Ant-Man”.
Additional casting rumors suggest that Michael Pena has entered early negotiations for an undisclosed role, and former “Lost” star Evangeline Lilly is in talks to take on a role as a female lead with some insiders suggesting that “she would play the daughter of Pym (Douglas) and Lang’s love interest.” Carey Stoll and Patrick Wilson are expected to take on the villainous roles.
“Ant-Man” is set to be released on July 17, 2015.
Also Check out our “Ant-Man” archive for more details
