The dust has settled on the Ant-Man story that saw Edgar Wright leave the picture after working on it for eight years alongside co-writer Joe Cornish (Attack the Block). Now Peyton Reed (The Break Up) will direct with a screenplay that will reportedly be overseen by Adam McKay (The Other Guys), whatever that means.
However, Film Drunk is throwing a little more fuel on the fire, adding another reason why Wright may have chose to walk from the feature.
We’ve all heard of Eric Pearson‘s supposedly hastily thrown together script rewrite that was said to be the reason Wright and Cornish decided the gig wasn’t for them, and while the tone of the picture was no longer what Wright saw in his head, a source at Film Drunk suggests product placement may have also been an issue:
they were finding little spots to work in ads. because disney is in charge of all this and disney is f*cking awful. it’s not marvel, they hate this too, but disney doesn’t give a shit, they don’t care who directs the movie, they only care about finding enough 5-year-old midgets to run around the park in ant-man costumes and who to bribe after they die. this is purely about money. ant-man is as small of a movie as marvel can make (i swear to christ you better not make an ‘ant’ pun); it’s an obscure character with a weird power, it’s not gonna make a billion dollars. they think it’ll top out around 400 million. that would still be about 150 million in pure profit but that’s not enough for disney so they’re working in ads. and they are not subtle.
Obviously there is nothing to back this claim up, but FilmDrunk does link to an Ain’t It Cool News story regarding Wright’s departure where they wrote: “For instance, a high premium was placed on current cultural references. Think it’d be funny if Scott Lang (Paul Rudd) were a Lyft driver and had to, at one point, reluctantly turn in his mustache? If so, this just might be the Ant-Man for you!”
Obviously the knives are going to be out for this one and the end result will either be “It’s surprisingly good” or “It’s as shitty as we thought it would be without Wright, I bet his version would have been great!” Which of the two evils will it be?
Meanwhile, this video of Michael Douglas, who also stars in the film, has been making the rounds as he gives the pat, PC response when asked about Wright leaving the movie.
[yt id=”EKRFLPq_FHM” width=”500″]
