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The rewrites that reportedly caused Wright to pull out have also precipitated a delay that caused the film to lose Patrick Wilson, reportedly one of the principal antagonists — and the altered script also removed certain characters entirely, leading to two other actors leaving at the same time as Wilson did.
Comic Con International: San Diego was their big coming-out party for the film, and Reed’s first chance to sell fans and the press on his vision for Ant-Man. Wright still loomed large over press for the event (and the centerpiece of the Ant-Man presentation was a proof-of-concept video very much like the one Wright had already presented two years ago at Comic-Con), but Reed held his own and held court with reporters.
ComicBook.com caught up with the director to ask him a few questions about the more comic-geeky aspects of his film.
Arrow recently announced that they will be bringing The Atom onto their show, meaning that another shrinking superhero will have beaten you to the screen. Does that change the math for you at all?
Not really. I don’t really even think about The Atom. There’s the shrinking stuff but one of the things I think is different is just the Marvel history of the Hank Pym Ant-Man and the Scott Lang Ant-Man and all the sort of dynamics in that.
I also like that Scott Lang’s a thief, you know? He’s an ex-con and that’s an interesting twist on it, too.
And then the way we’re visualizing it, I think, is unlike the way that it’s going to be visualized in any other medium.
The Walking Dead creator Robert Kirkman wrote a fan-favorite run on The Irredeemable Ant-Man a few years back. Is that something you looked at when you were brushing up, and if so, is there anything you can take from it?
And again, that’s the thing that I think Marvel’s always been good at is taking these heroes…you know, you go back and look at Tales to Astonish and the early Jack Kirby Ant-Man, it’s one thing. And then you get into like the John Byrne stuff and it’s another thing.
They’re always good about taking these characters and really making them relevant to the current time and Ant-Man is no exception. So yeah, we’ve looked at all of that stuff. We’re taking bits from all of it.
Do you have a five-second, soundbyte-type answer for fans who just look at the director change and the cast changes and everything else and say “What the hell is going on with this movie?”
Yeah, I mean…well, the Edgar thing obviously predated me. In terms of the cast, really we have an amazing cast. Patrick Wilson didn’t work out because obviously we’re shooting later than originally announced so he had another project that he couldn’t get out of. And two of our other actors are not doing it because the characters don’t exist anymore.
…That was longer than five seconds, sorry!
