He may have been the third choice of replacement to handle Ant-Man after the departure of Edgar Wright, but Marvel Studios president Kevin Feige wants you to know that Peyton Reed is definitely the right man for the job.
“Peyton is someone that I’ve been a fan of for a long time,” Feige told IGN.com, pointing out that the director was attached to Fox’s Fantastic Four a decade ago and revealing that the director had also been in the running for Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy but James Gunn “had a slightly more solid take that was of interest to us.”
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When it came to Ant-Man, Feige said that it “was not a slam-dunk” that Reed would take on the job, citing his concerns that “he was wasn’t just inheriting something or following someone else’s lead,” never mind stepping into a situation where the studio wouldn’t allow him any creative control.
“I kept saying, ‘You can either read what’s online, or come in and talk to us and look at all this stuff,’” Feige continued. “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.”
The executive went on to say that, despite numerous rewrites, the movie is “still very much in the spirit of what Edgar’s original pitch,” except that now it’s “on its way to being the absolute best version of what that movie could have been.” Apparently, the best version of an Edgar Wright pitch doesn’t require the involvement of Edgar Wright after all.
Ant-Man is scheduled for release July 2015.
