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Wednesday, July 16, 2014

Ant Man: Kevin Feige On The Director Change

The departure of director Edgar Wright at the helm of Marvel's "Ant-Man" has made the film a whole lot less interesting to a lot of folks who care about such things.

Peyton Reed ("Bring It On," "Down With Love") will take over the director's chair.

Marvel suit boss Kevin Feige tells IGN that the film is "in as good a shape as its ever been" despite the many screenwriters and last minute replacement helmer switch

Asked why Reed got the gig, Feige explained:

"Peyton is someone that I've been a fan of for a long time. People may not remember, though probably your readers remember, that he was attached to Fantastic Four more than ten 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. He's come in to meet on a lot of our movies over the years, in particular Guardians. 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. It was not a slam-dunk that he would just step into it and do it. He wanted to be sure that he was 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. 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 is really, really wonderful, and will be proving that soon enough. As I said to the Comic-Con audience a few years ago, ‘You might not have heard of [Captain America: The Winter Soldier directors] Joe Russo and Anthony Russo but you're going to be big fans of them soon.' And I'd say the same thing about Peyton Reed now.


In the comics, Hank Pym (Michael Douglas) is a scientist who invents a substance that allows him to change his size. Scott Lang (Paul Rudd) steals the original Ant-Man Pym's equipment and uses it to commit crimes but ultimately becomes a hero.

Rudd and Joseph Gordon-Levitt were both considered for the Lang role, but the latter is now doing an adaptation of author Neil Gaiman's  popular comic book series Sandman, with "Man Of Steel" writer David S. Goyer. Rudd is considered a more natural fit by the suits.
Former "Lost" star Evangeline Lilly is tipped to play the female lead. It is unclear who Lilly would play, however the character would appear in more than just this film. Rumors had Rashida Jones and Bryce Dallas Howard up for the part as well.

Though he lost out on a role to Michael Pena, actor Clifton Collins, Jr. he is still in the film. The "Pacific Rim" and "Star Trek" actor, did a cameo as a vegan police officer in Wright's "Scott Pilgrim vs. the World," and has reportedly been cast in a unspecified role. Pena's role is thought to be that of a tough Latino character who has a lot of physical action scenes in the movie. Matt Gerald will play a villain, though it's unclear if it's as 'White Power Dave' which he played in  Marvel's 14-minute short film that appeared on the February 25th Blu-ray release of "Thor: The Dark World" called All Hail the King. Corey Stoll also stars.

 Watchmen and The Conjuring star Patrick Wilson also stars in the film, but details of that role are unknown. David Dastmalchian ("The Dark Knight," "Prisoners") is in the pic but his role is also being kept under wraps.

Wright and Joe Cornish co-wrote the initial script. Adam McKay ("Anchorman") was lined up to take over but a deal could not be reached--McKay did some work on the script for the film instead. Gabriel Ferrari and Andrew Barrer will reportedly preform script re-writes Rawson Marshall Thurber and Ruben Fleischer were in the mix with McKay to potentially direct...

Production is scheduled to take place in Georgia starting next month. Marvel intends to keep its July 17th 2015 release date

Reed will be talk about the film at the end of next week during Marvel's "Ant-Man" presentation at San Diego Comic-Con.

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