For eight years, Edgar Wright was the man who was going to bring Ant-Man to life on the big screen, both as a director and co-writer. But in May 2014, he dropped out of directing the Ant-Man movie due to creative differences with Marvel. Two years after the movie's release, Wright still hasn't checked out Ant-Man or any of the previews that were released beforehand, and he doesn't plan to because it would be like hanging out with an ex at the most awkward of times. As Wright put it:
I haven't seen it and I haven't even seen the trailer. It would kind of like be asking me, "Do you want to watch your ex-girlfriend have sex?" Like, 'No, I'm good.'
Yeah, that's not an ideal situation. Despite working on Ant-Man for nearly a decade, Edgar Wright laid it out extremely clearly to Uproxx why he has no interest in watching the movie. Following his departure, Peyton Reed was hired as the new director, and Adam McKay was brought in to make script changes with Paul Rudd, the movie's star. Wright received a story credit for Ant-Man, but as expected, the final cut went in a much different direction than what Wright originally envisioned. While he's done well so far with avoiding Ant-Man, Wright did come close at one point to seeing the Marvel blockbuster while he was aboard a plane. The Baby Driver director recalled:
The closest I came to it was that somebody sitting near me on a flight was watching it. And when I saw that the person sitting next to me was going to watch the movie, I thought, hmm, maybe I'm going to do some work on my laptop.
Although he doesn't ever plan on watching Ant-Man, Edgar Wright see Paul Rudd's Scott Lang in Captain America: Civil War, and he found him to be the "funniest bit." Wright also revealed that he doesn't have any regrets about not staying aboard Ant-Man; the only thing he's still disappointed by is that he and his writing partner, Joe Cornish, wasted so much time on the movie given what eventually happened.
Overall, it sounds like Edgar Wright has moved on from his time with Marvel, and since Baby Driver has been earning critical acclaim from early reviews, his directorial career is still flourishing. As for Ant-Man, he's made two appearances in the Marvel Cinematic Universe so far, and he'll continue to be a major player in this franchise in the coming years.
Scott Lang will shrink back into action when Ant-Man and the Wasp is released on July 6, 2018. In the meantime, you can see Edgar Wright's latest feature, Baby Driver, when it races into theaters tomorrow.
