The Running Man Director Finally Explains Why He Walked Away From Ant-Man
Edgar Wright had been shaping Ant-Man since before the MCU existed, telling Variety he was eager to put his own stamp on the hero — but in a last-minute twist just days before cameras were set to roll, the Shaun of the Dead filmmaker walked away. Now he reveals what finally pushed him out.
Edgar Wright finally explained, in plain terms, why he bailed on Marvel's Ant-Man right before cameras were supposed to roll. Short version: he signed up to make an Edgar Wright movie, and the Marvel machine wanted a Marvel movie.
What Wright was building vs what Marvel wanted
Wright had been attached to Ant-Man long before the MCU exploded into a 30-something-title juggernaut. He spent about eight years writing and shaping it as a hard-boiled thief story with a noir vibe, then planned to collide that with a big effects-forward, genre-mixing romp. Once the MCU took off, Marvel leaned into a unified tone to keep everything consistent and broadly family-friendly. And that is where the tug-of-war started.
'The idea of doing it at the time excited me, because you want to put your own spin on it. But between pitching the idea and doing it, the whole franchise had blown up. There was a house style. The thing that attracted me about it had gone away.'
The break-up, clean and simple
- Wright originated Ant-Man at Marvel years before the MCU hit full speed and spent eight years on the script.
- As production neared, studio notes kept coming, and Marvel wanted to commission a new draft without his oversight.
- That would have shifted him from writer-director to director-for-hire, which he was not interested in.
- He exited just days before filming was set to begin, and Marvel brought in Peyton Reed to direct.
'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... 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.'
What survived of Wright's version
Bits of Wright's DNA did make it into the finished film. He still received story and screenplay credit, and you can feel echoes of his tone in the heist structure and some of the visual gags. But the version he wanted to shoot never happened, and that alternate timeline is one of the MCU's big what-ifs.
How Ant-Man landed anyway
Peyton Reed took over and delivered the Ant-Man we know. The movie runs 117 minutes, is sitting at about 83% with critics and 85% with audiences on Rotten Tomatoes, and holds a 7.2 on IMDb. Not bad, but you can see why people still wonder what Wright's cut would have looked like.
The bigger pattern this exposes
This is not just one filmmaker-versus-studio clash. Early on, Marvel occasionally let distinctive voices lead (Shane Black's Iron Man 3 comes to mind). As the franchise swelled to roughly 37 movies and a pile of shows, the 'house style' hardened. That uniformity kept the MCU cohesive and wildly successful through the 2010s, but it also fed the current superhero fatigue chatter: when every movie is shaped to fit the same mold, fewer of them feel like they have their own personality.
Meanwhile, James Gunn is talking up a DCU where projects are defined by the writers' and directors' visions. Marvel, for now, seems more focused on nostalgia playbook moves, which many expect to continue into future tentpoles like Secret Wars (and, if the chatter pans out, something Doomsday-flavored).
Where to watch, if you want to revisit
Ant-Man is streaming on Disney+ in the U.S.