Paul Rudd Antman - H 2014
Zade Rosenthal/Marvel StudiosAdam McKay isn’t directing Ant-Man, but he has definitely left his mark.
McKay, director of Anchorman and The Other Guys, told Collider that the film’s star, Paul Rudd, asked him to help rewrite the potential tentpole. The two then spent six to eight weeks working on the script that director Edgar Wright left behind after exiting the project in May.
“We just shaped the whole thing. We just tried to streamline it, make it cleaner, make it a little bigger, a little more aggressive, make it funnier in places — we just basically did a rewrite,” McKay said. He said they also added “some cool new action.”
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McKay, who was in talks to take over for Wright in the director’s chair before Peyton Reed took the job, was surprised by Rudd’s writing talent. “I’ve always known Paul Rudd’s a really good writer from improvising with him on set, but I had no idea he was that good — he’s really great with dialogue,” McKay said.
Despite the changes they made to the script, McKay pointed out that much of what Wright oversaw remains in the new version, including “a lot of dialogue and character [stuff].”
The film, with a screenplay currently credited to writers McKay, Gabriel Ferrari and Andrew Barrer, features Michael Douglas, Evangeline Lilly, Corey Stoll and John Slattery.
Disney releases Ant-Man on July 15, 2015.
Email: Ryan.Gajewski@pgmedia.org
Twitter: @_RyanGajewski
