Since Marvel doesn’t have to do much to get people excited about Avengers: Age of Ultron, the studio is focusing its energy on getting non-comic book fans interested in Ant-Man. Along with all this week’s teaser (and teaser for a teaser), the film is the topic of Entertainment Weekly’s cover story.
During the story, the magazine had to bring up the elephant in the room - Edgar Wright’s sudden departure from the film in May. The Scott Pilgrim vs. The World director had been working on the project since 2001, so when he left, some feared that it would be the end of the film.
Star Paul Rudd, who is friends with Wright, told EW that he was “devastated.” Evangeline Lilly, who hadn’t signed her contract yet, could have decided to leave the project. She wanted to see the new Marvel-approved script before signing on.
“I got held off for months,” Lilly said. “Marvel knew [that first revised screenplay] wasn’t good. They just knew it was in the direction they wanted.”
As Comic Book Movie points out, Marvel chief Kevin Feige went more in depth about the issue, and denied that any script changes were made without Wright knowing.
“It is true that there were disagreements about the direction the script should take,” Feige told EW. “Everything was aboveboard. Everything was done with everybody else’s knowledge. There was a sense of ‘We’re going in this direction, you’re staying in this direction—maybe it’s best that we end as friends.’”
It does sound like Wright did keep an amicable relationship with the project, since director Peyton Reed said in July that he actually exchanged emails with Wright.
Rudd, who even worked on the script, told EW that there is still the spirit of what Wright and Joe Cornish originally wrote. “It’s been an emotional roller coaster, but I’m very excited now.”
Ant-Man opens on July 17. You can check out the trailer here.
image courtesy of Kristin Callahan/ACE/INFphoto.com