"Ant-Man" has been in the news a great deal in the past few months after the exit of writer-director Edgar Wright. The acclaimed director of films like "Scott Pilgrim vs. the World" and "Shaun of the Dead" bowed out of the project after having creative differences with the Marvel brass.
Enter "Bring it On" director Peyton Reed, who was hired to replace Wright a few months back. It was a move that took a lot of people by surprise, but was necessary for the studio's future.
Recently Marvel head honcho Kevin Feige sat down with IGN to discuss this summer's "Guardians of the Galaxy" and steered the conversation into talking about the upcoming production of "Ant-Man." Feige sounds like he has nothing but love for the new director's body of work and says that Reed has been close to directing a bunch of Marvel movies over the years.
"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 10 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," says Feige.
While Reed was considered for directing "Guardians of the Galaxy," Feige goes on to add why he thinks he found the right man for the "Ant-Man" job.
"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," Feige reports.
Feige says that Edgar Wright's original pitch for the product and the framework of the film are still very much alive. Hopefully, Reed has the same passion that Wright had for the project. We'll see next July.
