Kevin Feige Praises Peyton Reed As New Ant-Man Director

Peyton Reed was recently announced as the director who would take the place of Edgar Wright on Marvel’s Ant-Man film. Any choice to replace Wright would be a controversial one, given Wright’s involvement since the project was conceived, and the unique style he was expected to bring to the film.

While on the press tour for Guardians of the Galaxy (via IGN), Marvel Studios head Kevin Feige shed a little light on why the studio decided to go with Reed for Ant-Man. Here’s what Feige had to say:

“Number one – thank you for asking the question in that way, which is doing what we’re doing which is thinking about the movie and the end result of the movie. 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…

“He’s come in to meet on a lot of our movies over the years, in particular Guardians. He had a lot of awesome things to say on Guardians. But James [Gunn] had a slightly more solid take that was of interest to us. But Peyton was always on our lists, and so when this happened and Edgar [Wright] said ‘Not for me’ we met with a handful of people, but Peyton was always one that I thought would be great.

“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.

“It’s still very much in the spirit of what Edgar’s original pitch was and the entire template of the movie is what Edgar set out and originally came and pitched us maybe eight years ago now. But it’s on its way to being the absolute best version of what that movie could have been.

“Peyton is really, really wonderful, and will be proving that soon enough. As I said to the Comic-Con audience a few years ago, ‘You might not have heard of [Captain America: The Winter Soldier directors] Joe and Antony Russo, but you’re going to be big fans of them soon.’ And I’d say the same thing about Peyton Reed now.”

Feige is walking a line, trying to imply that the film will stay true to Wright’s vision that had everyone so excited in the first place, while still insisting that whatever adjustments he, Reed, and the studio are currently making to the film are absolutely justified. He is also projecting complete faith in Reed’s ability to make Ant-Man worthwhile. We’ll have to wait for July 2015 to see how things turn out.