When Paul Rudd first signed on to star in Marvel Studios' Ant-Man in December 2013, he was also signing on for the opportunity to work with the brilliant director Edgar Wright. Of course, this opportunity all went away when a few months later Wright and Marvel decided to part ways over creative differences. Naturally, this had a pretty big impact on the film's star - and he has recently revealed that he was actually devastated by the British filmmaker's departure from the project.
Rudd spoke his mind about the situation with Edgar Wright and Ant-Man while doing an interview with Entertainment Weekly, explaining that the whole thing really took him by surprise - though he did get word about the director leaving prior to the story making its way to the press. Asked if there was any temptation on his part to follow Wright and leave the superhero film, Rudd said,
"There are lots of things that go through your mind. There are certain things I can and can’t do, and then there also certain things I will and won’t say. But I was devastated, you know?"
Instead of cutting and running, however, Paul Rudd instead decided to take the exact opposite approach: he took more creative control. When Adam McKay was brought aboard to work on the script, Rudd found himself "organically" falling into the role of co-writer, and together they started generating new ideas for the project and expanding on the story elements that were already present in the previous drafts that had been written by Edgar Wright and Joe Cornish. The movie will be only his second screenwriting credit - the other coming on the 2008 comedy Role Models - and Rudd was thankful to have his Anchorman director by his side simply due to the fact that the material was unlike anything he had ever worked with before. He explained,
"It’s a little strange writing something that’s really, truly out of my comfort zone. I wouldn’t know how to begin to write [something like this], but sometimes you just hit the ground running, I guess. Thankfully Adam was there."
It will definitely be fascinating to see what the end result of Ant-Man will be - especially after watching the trailer that was released earlier this week. With Paul Rudd and Adam McKay taking care of the script, many of us anticipated that the preview would be filled with jokes and various gags - but instead what was delivered was a much more somber, serious piece about second chances and living up to true potential.
We will all always wonder what Ant-Man would have looked like had Edgar Wright stayed with the project all the way through production, but we're still tremendously excited to see what director Peyton Reed has cooked up for us. We're waiting with baited breath for the film's release on July 17th
