What with Ron Howard taking over as director of the untitled Han Solo project with just four weeks left of principal shooting, you'd be hard-pressed to find a major tentpole film that had such a tumultuous relationship with its studio in recent years.
In fact, the most recent one we can think of is Edgar Wright and Marvel. Essentially, Wright had been working on Ant-Man for a number of years, was extremely positive and upbeat about the whole thing and - then he quit out of nowhere. Rumours have abounded since then about what went down, and the finished product that Peyton Reed turned in was an interesting if slight chapter of the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
Now that Edgar Wright's next film, Baby Driver, is headed to the cinemas, he's on the promotional tour and naturally, the question of his exit from Ant-Man is up for discussion - especially in light of what's happening with Han Solo. "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," explained Wright to Variety's Playback podcast. "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."
Wright went on, explaining that one of the deciding factors for his exit was Marvel asking for a draft that Wright didn't write. "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. 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."
The interesting part of all it, however, is the fact that pretty much all the department heads on his version of Ant-Man left in solidarity with him - and then joined him on the set of Baby Driver.
As we said before, the Ant-Man we got in the end was by no means a bad film - and Peyton Reed took a wayward ship and steered it out of danger - but you've always got to wonder what that film would have looked like, had Edgar Wright got his way.
Via Variety
