Edgar Wright Has "No Regrets" About Leaving Marvel's Ant-Man

Edgar Wright's Ant-Man predates the Marvel Cinematic Universe. In 2006, the fan-favorite Shaun of the Dead and Scott Pilgrim vs. the World director and writer Joe Cornish signed on for Marvel's Ant-Man as the then-independent studio recruited Jon Favreau to launch the MCU with Iron Man. Wright promoted the movie at that year's San Diego Comic-Con and again in 2010, only to exit the project in May 2014 — some 14 months before Ant-Man's July 17, 2015, release date. In a joint statement, Marvel Studios and Wright said at the time that the split was "due to differences in their vision of the film."

Nearly a decade later, Wright doesn't regret exiting Ant-Man — not even a little.

"I feel like I get superstitious talking about future projects because with a certain movie that I didn't do, before I left the movie, I had done two different Comic-Con appearances and press. I have no regrets about leaving the movie, and it was the right thing to do at the time. And at the time, I had like zero regrets about it," Wright said on the Happy Sad Confused podcast. "But I do have regrets about doing the press. That sort of seems foolish where there's interviews that you did about a film that you haven't started making yet."

"And so that's the thing where I get a bit superstitious," Wright explained, "because I think, 'I don't want to do that ever again,' where I literally was in Hall H twice for a movie that I didn't even end up making. That's the bit that embarrasses me."

Producer Kevin Feige ultimately tapped Bring It On and Yes Man director Peyton Reed to helm Ant-Man, which went on to gross $519 million at the global box office and spawned two sequels directed by Reed: 2018's Ant-Man and the Wasp and 2023's Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania. In 2017, Wright said of the split: "The most diplomatic answer is I wanted to make a Marvel movie but I don't think they really wanted to make an Edgar Wright movie," 

"I was the writer-director on it and then they wanted to do a draft without me, and having written all my other movies, that's a tough thing to move forward. Suddenly becoming a director for hire on it, you're sort of less emotionally invested and you start to wonder why you're there, really," Wright told Variety in 2017 while promoting another passion project years in the making: Baby Driver.