Edgar Wright explains why he left Ant-Man

Edgar Wright has finally opened up on why he stepped away from Ant-Man.

Ant-Man was definitely one of Marvel Studios’ riskiest endeavors. Many were quick to call the film Marvel’s first flop (like Guardians of the Galaxy before it). These claims only increased when director Edgar Wright, who had been attached to the project for nearly a decade, left over “creative differences.” Wright has not spoken too much about it publicly, but now he has shed some light on the matter.

In a recent interview with Variety, Wright reflected on the project and revealed that creative control did, in fact, play a role:

"I think the most diplomatic answer is I wanted to make a Marvel movie, but I think they really wanted to make an Edgar Wright movie. 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. But, after The World’s End, I did work on it for like a year, I was gonna make the movie."

The director explained that his enthusiasm deteriorated even further when the studio began working on a new draft of the screenplay:

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"But, then 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."

It’s clear to see that Wright was indeed passionate about making the film, and knew exactly how he wanted it to go. Unfortunately, things changed, and the studio went in a different direction by bringing in Peyton Reed. But, as mentioned, we still got a pretty darn good movie out of it.

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Wright’s film would have been intriguing, but like many (including star Evangeline Lilly) have pointed out, his vision would have deviated heavily from style of the established MCU.

Still, it’s fun to imagine what he would have done with the character, and we’ll probably always wonder every time we see the pint-sized hero running across the screen.