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By now you’ve probably heard all about Edgar Wright and Marvel parting ways over Ant Man, a movie Wright had been attached to since 2006, and officially onboard since 2012. If the rumors are to be believed, Wright and his writing partner Joe Cornish had come to believe they’d been hired because Marvel believed in their vision for the project, only for Marvel to later give them notes and rewrites that were such a substantial departure from what they’d been planning that they chose to leave the project.
“Edgar & Joe were upset by the sudden, out of nowhere lack of faith in them as filmmakers,” as Latino Review, who broke the story, put it.
While the truth of what happened is still unverified (and will likely remain so), when you cover the movie business for long enough, you eventually hear enough similar stories that patterns begin to emerge, and you start to understand how things work. Just a few days before the Edgar Wright news broke, I, as one of the world’s only Freddy Got Fingered superfans, was reading a Vice interview with Tom Green about trying to get that film made. As Green said about Fingered:
The movie didn’t instantly get made. The movie got bought by a major movie studio. They make all the major movies with all the major comedians. We went in for our first meeting and said I wanted to direct the movie. And they said, “What? You wanna what? You wanna direct the movie? Have you ever directed a movie?” Well, I’d directed my TV show, but that’s not a movie. I said I want to direct the movie, and I don’t want to change a thing in the script. Nothing. And they sort of looked at me, and I think they were kind of confused by that. They’d already bought the script.
Needless to say, the next day we got a call. They said, “We don’t think we can make the movie the way Tom wants to make the movie. We have to change a lot of stuff in this. We can’t do this the exact way it’s in the script.” They said they were going to put it in turnaround. That’s a film term for basically giving you a certain amount of time to sell the script to another studio. If nobody buys it after that, we own the script and it never gets made. They gave us a 30-day turnaround. That was them saying, “Screw you. You don’t want to do it the way we want to do it, so we’re basically going to throw it on a shelf.”
It seems strange to me that they bought it in the first place if they read it and saw this was the movie you wanted to make. They bought it and then wanted to change it. That’s counterintuitive.
You’d think it would be the opposite, but that’s not the way Hollywood works. They buy things and then they change it. The corporations and executives take young talent that’s interesting, bring them in, and then make their movie with them. Not make some kid from Canada’s movie. It’s some kid from Canada in their movie. They were going to make it a cookie-cutter studio movie, and I said no. I had an opportunity to make a movie. We’re gonna make our f*cking movie and we don’t give a f*ck.In hindsight, would I have done everything the same? I probably wouldn’t have, because I would have known the effect it would have on me and my ability to make another movie. I certainly wouldn’t have been as cutthroat in my firmness when it came to creative decisions—like walking away from a studio because they wanted to take a couple of scenes out of it.
He also mentions that William Shatner was his landlord at the time, which is neither here nor there, but is nonetheless awesome.
Basically, there’s a long history of people like Tom Green (and probably Edgar Wright) selling a studio on a pitch or a script, only to have that studio turn around and want to change some of the most basic things about it. It seems to be a symptom of the way the film business treats the screenwriter. While theater contracts often give the playwright the authority “to approve almost every aspect of a show,” in the movie business, the studio and the director can do almost anything they want with a script once they’ve bought it, contributing to a mentality where a script or a pitch is just a jumping off point, or even just a job interview.
Hiring Edgar Wright, a critically-acclaimed, fanboy-beloved director whose films haven’t always been especially successful at the box office, certainly fit into the narrative Marvel has been trying to create, where their success is supposedly built on their “special understanding of comics, fans, superheroes, and narrative,” regardless of how true that is.
There often seems to be a basic conflict, where creators think they’ve been hired to execute their vision of a project, when really they’ve been hired to lend their name and talent and creativity to help execute the studio’s vision of a project.
You can find many examples of this, but Rope of Silicon astutely cites this passage from a Hollywood Reporter piece from 2011 about the departure of director Patty Jenkins, who was to direct Thor 2:
…an insider in Jenkins’ camp says the lack of clarity might be on Marvel’s part. This person says Jenkins was so explicit about her vision for the film that she didn’t expect to be hired in the first place. The source speculates that Marvel executives might have been won over initially by Portman’s enthusiasm for Jenkins but then, “when they started to interview writers for the rewrite . . . may have decided they really weren’t comfortable.”
Marvel had certain things they needed to achieve, says another source. There were constraints on what she could do creatively.
Another contributing factor in these kinds of creative splits could have something to do with our old friend Allan Weisbecker’s adage that “no one in Hollywood reads anything” — ie, filmmakers believing studios really like their script when there’s a decent chance the people involved haven’t even read it.
Meanwhile, the studios use those filmmakers’ names and visions to attract talent, like Jenkins helping to sell Thor star Natalie Portman on the project, or Edgar Wright helping to attract Paul Rudd to Ant Man. And oftentimes, the star remains contractually tied to the film even after the director or writer has dropped out – giving a studio still more incentive to hire a name director, regardless of what they actually want to do with the project. The cast of Ant Man was to include Paul Rudd, Michael Douglas, Evangeline Lilly, Michael Peña, Patrick Wilson and Corey Stoll, many of whom probably signed on for an Edgar Wright Ant Man movie, not realizing that they’d eventually end up in a Some Random Dude Ant Man movie, which has to sound far less enticing (unless you’re on Superhero Director Grindr).
These conflicts have probably existed as long as the movie business has existed, and you can’t generalize to say that one side or the other is always right. But if you’re a fan of seeing different types of stories and hearing a variety of storytelling voices represented in mainstream film, you have to cheer people like Edgar Wright or Patty Jenkins, who’ll put their careers and pocketbooks on the line to make that happen. It’s probably a lot easier, and certainly more lucrative, to just make whatever movie the studio wants to make. It takes a special type of person to turn down the money and whatever else to walk away when they no longer believe in the product.
Unnamed and fictional studio executive: “First, Edgar Wright said he wanted to change the title to Aunt-Man, and make it–in his words–a sort of super-hero Mrs. Doubtfire. Then he went on and on about casting Nick Frost as the Hulk, and Simon Pegg as Jimmy Olsen, and we knew he had to go.”
Nick Frost as the Hulk would be kind of awesome, not even gonna lie.
I would see a Hulk film starring Frost for sure.
I would watch Nick Frost in just about anything, but man do I hate comic books.
Marvel has no idea but they’ve screwed up bad with this one. Edgar wright is nerd royalty and they’ve just insulted the king.
The audience for these movies is no longer the nerds.
Yeah, but this has blown up in their faces. But then they’re Marvel, they think they’re the Hulk.
What nerds want doesnt really matter. They dont bring the money like the general public does.
But this process did keep Kevin Smith’s jorts-wearing “Superman” from getting made, so…balance?.
I was under the impression that all the egregious bullshit from Smith’s script came directly from the producer Jon Peters.
@ThatOtherDave That’s what Smith claims. I’m profoundly skeptical that’s the entire truth.
My kingdom for a Kevin Smith directed Superman movie staring Nic Cage fighting a giant robot spider.
@DevilDinosaur – So “Wild Wild West”, but more believable?
YOU’RE FUCKING FIRED, BOB!
I guess I can see their (the studio’s) trepidation from the point that Edgar’s last foray into adapting was a massive financial failure, for which he had carte blanche. I mean, 48 mil worldwide and 25 mil in home market is still 12 mil south of the production budget of 85 mil, much less the ad budget. So, he’s not a safe bet from the Wall Street perspective on the boards these studio execs actually have to answer to.
I still say this frees Edgar up to make something better, and hopefully original. So, fuck ’em.
I wouldn’t say Favreau, Branagh, or Whedon were all safe bets for the studio either but they all brought a unique vision to their projects that would’ve been lost had the studio just gone with whatever action director for hire they could find lying around.
I hope Marvel can still put out a good Ant Man film as I still like that cast, but we’ll be left wondering what could have been.
I certainly agree with Favreau and Whedon on that count. But neither of them really had as bad a blemish as Scott Pilgrim for a major studio. And those fuckers never forget when you shit the bed financially.
But, Branagh was a pretty safe bet. He’d been directing since the 80s, and had over a dozen director’s credits by the time he helmed Thor. Maybe not the safest bet, no, but surely a sound one.
Favreau, Whedon and Branagh are hardly exciting visual directors, though. It was always going to be, uh, interesting to see how Wright was going to fit into the house style of the Marvel cinematic universe. And those triumphing Gunn – we haven’t actually seen the movie yet and the trailers weren’t avant garde black and white euro-pumps, so it’s highly likely it’ll look very similar to every other Marvel movie.
See, this is where I think Wright threw a tantrum and quit. Whedon has done pretty much his vision and no one messed with him.
Also, as I am sure someone has mentioned, Ant-Man is an Avenger. So it would kinda be justified that Marvel wanted a certain feel to the film to later fold Ant-Man into an Avengers movie without too much a visual shift. And, if anything, Edgar is known for an intensely unique visual style. And maybe they just didn’t mesh in the end…
We’ll probably never know what really happened. But it’s show-business.
This is entirely the problem. Studios are not about film- making or art. They are stock brokers. They are Jordan Belfort. They just want to fuck everyone and take all the money. They do not care about a product, or about what is being made, only spreadsheets of what their net result will be.
This is why I do not see “blockbusters”. Going to see those movies is bad for the world.
@AB
Eh, caring about making a profit isn’t necessarily an issue. If none of a studio’s movies make money, it won’t be in business for very long. There are plenty of issues with corporate-owned movie studios, but the fact that they want to be profitable isn’t in and of itself an issue.
@Old Balls the problem isn’t that they want to make some money. The problem is that if they could make $5million on a good movie or $6 million on a horrible movie that would suck and leave an audience displeased, they would choose the latter. Moreover, their operational model requires worse than the latter and they apply it to everything – more tie-ins, more advertising, more taco bell, who gives a fuck what’s on screen as long as it has no story and moves to fast to notice the poor quality.
“MY HOOVES!!!”
Ant-man. We must be near the bottom of the comic book hero roster, right?
They could honestly pitch a “Rope Boy” movie and I wouldn’t know if it was legit or not
Well, there is a Stilt-Man. [en.wikipedia.org]
Yup, even low-rent Daredevil super(HA!)villains scoff at Ant-Man.
I’m still surprised Sam Raimi stuck around for Spider-Man 3 after Avi Arad & co forced Venom down his throat. I guess he really really wanted to show us how much James Franco likes pie.
So good!
Contractual obligation. Even the execs admit it.
“There is no computer job, is there? You’re just gallavantin’ around in my suit!”
I feel like if you’re signing on to make a multimillion dollar movie that is a tie-in to a billion dollar multimedia franchise that you know there’s a good 80% chance you’re signing on to be in “some random dude’s Ant-man.”
I mean yeah you want it to be the guy you’ve talked to it about and are excited to work with, but pretty much every single one of them are experienced Hollywood actors who know that things can change at the drop of a hat.
I was wondering why Marvel wouldn’t trust a man who’s proven time again to be catnip for Marvel’s target demographic. They might as well fire Paul Rudd and hire some guy from a crappy TV show.
PLEASE don’t fire Paul Rudd, Marvel.
Jim Parsons as Ant Man!
Is that really Marvel’s target audience though?
I’d be willing to bet that the audience for Wright’s films and fans of Ant-Man are a pretty big overlapping Venn Diagram.
Dudes who like porn better than real women, and dudes who love comic book movies are a pretty well-overlapped venn diagram as well, but that doesn’t mean we should start casting Kagney Linn Karter as Susan Storm just because a bunch of 40 year old me wno are stuck in adolescence think it would be hot. Wright’s original stuff is a great, but he’s a horrible choice for one of these.
I would watch Kagney Linn Karter as Sue Storm. I’d watch that so hard.
Hmm @Underball your ideas intrigue me and I wish to subscribe to your newsletter. That casting decision would also certainly make Mr. Fantastic a more interesting character as well.
Also, is it weird to anyone else that they’d let Gunn do this thing and get weird all over Guardians of the Galaxy, but they had issues with Wright’s Antman?
Maybe Gunn knew how to take notes…
Ant-Man is an Avenger. You know, Marvel’s billion dollar franchise. They’re kinda a big deal.
Nobody has ever purchased a Guardians comic. Like ever. Nothing you say will change my mind.
Also Paul Rudd/Michael Douglass > Chris Pratt/Batista.
I hate to be THAT guy, but Guardians Of The Galaxy had a pretty long run of late and took part in several reasonably well-selling and highly regarded crossovers – a run that the current filmic line-up spun directly from. Ant-Man is one of those characters (like Dr Strange or Blade) that is supposed to be Big Fish but cannot sell a series for shit.
Admittedly, even a big selling B-List Marvel title still sells 30-40k and isn’t enough of a demographic for anyone to target a major blockbuster tentpole…
Gotcha. I was just playing Devils Advocate for shitz n gigz.
I’ll never understand why a hero who beats his wife doesnt sell better.
it is too bad Khal Drogo didn’t just accept what Marvel offered and play Drax in GotG. May end up as a big mistake for him.
He couldn’t be in GotG @Bizarro Stormy if he did that he might not be by his phone when he gets the call about the Conan sequel.
There’s a chance that what Wright wanted to do with Ant-Man was kinda terrible right?
If this means that Ant-Man is in turnaround then nae bother. I’ve never understood what was so appealing (to Wright and Cornish) about putting their spin on Ant-Man anyway. Ant-Man? That would be like being asked to expand on the James Bond universe by making a movie about the character who installs the vending machines at MI6’s headquarters. There might be enough to make a comedy sketch but a whole movie?
Now, if someone would throw them the rights to Deadpool you would probably be able to see my nerd boner from the fucking moon.
My guess? Marvel wants Pym and Wright wanted Lang.
Then there is no way they would have announced old man Pym all those months ago. No, they don’t want the lead to have a history of wife-beating. I’m guessing them cutting out Pym as the creator of Ultron says it all.
They retconned that shit recently, and there were soft retcons about how it wasn’t meant to be a slap but a poorly-staged drawing of him pushing her away.
How do they retcon the Ultimate version? You know, where they go to pull a lot of their ideas for the movies from.
Do they pull a lot of ideas from 1610? I thought they just got a lot of style cues from them. Seems like most characteristics come from 616.
In any event, Pym is no more a wife beater than Richards. But Pym hitting Jan is a meme now.
The scene where Tom Green licks the protruding bone from that guys broken leg makes my pee pee tumescent.
Oh, we’re doing fave quotes?.. um.. “You got a problem with my legs?” “No… YOU got a problem with your legs.”
What happened to that bitch, she was hot!
A lot of the online chatter seems to focus on the fact that Wright wanted to keep Ant Man as a standalone movie, but Marvel needed it to fit into the Avengers Universe. What’s really weird about this whole situation is that he has been working on this since 2006, when it was supposed to be part of the Marvel Phase 1 line up. Might have burnt up any good will he had with Marvel, especially if he tried to delay it again.
Marvel has succeeded because it follows one vision, Marvel’s vision. Now they have let Directors and certain actors add to that vision but it is still Marvel’s vision.
If Wright couldn’t deal with that, that sucks but it is what has made the Marvel movies cohesive and great instead of the messed that WB, Fox and Sony have made,
Well stated.
Nah, it’s made them cookie cutter, boring, mediocrity. They are more exercises in corporate synergy than they are films.
@Juan_Carlo riiiiiiiiiiiiight. They are finally making good comic book movies that are fun and entertaining. Lets just call them cookie cutter.
@Bizarro Stormy I like all of ’em, love some of ’em, but they are, first and foremost, “product.” They are not built to be art. They are built to sell and keep selling. Artistically, WB is doing far better than Marvel in this respect.
There’s a documentary on Netflix that interviews screenwriters and it’s just a nightmare hearing all their horror stories with studio heads.
I imagine lots of gagging.
@Jeff Sorensen are you thinking of “Tales from the Script”?
I don’t know, it may be too easy to look at any “artist has vision…vision conflicts with studio….studio fires artist…studio bunch of dicks” situation without at least considering that maybe, just maybe, the artist trying to adapt a mainstream, broad audience sort of movie may have just been wrong.
Just maybe, they are trying to play to the Lowest Common Denominator and make everything “Life According to Jim” or worse.
Maybe every film shouldn’t be made for everybody. I generally hate films that appeal to the masses, because the masses fucking stupid. Fucking Walmart movies.
Remember The Spirit? It was unique, an original take, and no one had ever seen anything like it. And it was fucking unwatchable.
This is a superhero film, based on a Marvel comic. If they’re not making it for as many people to watch as possible, what the hell are the even making it for? Go watch another indie flick about some quirky guy who doesn’t fit in and doesn’t know what he wants in life bang another quirky, impossibly cute lost soul as they try to find out what life is all about if you want something niche.
@Had To Be Said – no, I don’t remember the spirit, but hey, I guess it one or even a thousand films sucked when they didn’t follow the formula, we should always follow the formula. I also like how you tried to paint me into a corner with Zoe Descheanel. That was… unfounded. you can choose to ignore my point, but maybe, just maybe, you can see it even through your xrayspecs. and maybe everything doesn’t have to be watered down to be palateable to everyone. Fucking Picasso, why didn’t he just draw people regular.
@Underbra – die in a fire.
We’re not talking about film theory, here, we’re talking about superhero movies. Being an “out there” superhero film is a surefire way to fail. Keeping it simple, but nailing the dialogue, easy to follow but not too formulaic plot, getting a great cast and making it fun is their only job. With any big budget summer tentpole movie, formula is very important. Picasso didn’t make art for the masses he made art for himself. However, when he was younger and needed to pay the bills, he was willing to sacrifice artistic integrity and paint people regular. Sometimes you have to do the norm to do the strange.
Mr. Mancini, thank you for this article. Of the many articles out there, this is one of the most concise I’ve read (including the LR article).
Indeed … Thanx Vince
So a creator has an idea then sells it to a studio. the studio Frankensteins the idea to make it more commercially viable. why would anyone enter into a system where you know something that you care about will get bastardized by a bunch of suits. i would think people would want their vision on the screen not the studios
Wright was not the creator of Ant-Man, and the script he was working from was not a vision that any Marvel fans wanted to see. Wright likes to think of this as his own project, but there were always going to be rules governing how much he could alter it from the original.
The studio wanted it to be commercially viable, and being such a perfectionist that it’s been in production since before Iron Man was released finally came to a head because that shit’s cray.
“creators think they’ve been hired to execute their vision of a project” , what would all the studio fops do to justify their existence on a day to day basis if they sat back and said “have at it boys”. only guys like Spielberg and Scorsese still get that sort of deal.
anywhooooo … Marvel / Disney is the creator here, so there’s that.
As per Box Office Mojo : unajusted for time, Marvel movies have grossed : 15 Billion (that’s with a big B) worldwide , most of that in the last decade, one would think they know what they’re doing with their properties. [http://www.boxofficemojo.com/franchises/chart/?id=marvelcomics.htm]
Edgar Wright fans have no one to blame but themselves. Stop pirating his movies and start going to theaters.
That film separates comedy fans from shitheads really easily. Tom gets it.
So glad he’s off this project! 1.) He clearly had little interest in it as he sat on it for 7 years and missed two chances to tie it in with Avengers. 2.) The plot he was using would have butchered the mythology to HalleBarry-Catwoman proportions, so he obviously was no fan of the comic. I don’t know how he got attached to begin with or why anyone thought it was a good idea, but I’m glad it’s null and void.
I heard from him that this was his passion project.
Ant-Man has fans?
“I say Geneva and you hear Helsinki?”
I thought I was the only fan of “Freddy Got Fingered” in the whole world. I actually saw it in the theater when it came out and it was awesome to see everyone else in the theater besides me and my buddies walk out like 20 minutes into it (granted, there were maybe 20 people total in the audience). I don’t know what they were expecting, based on the title. Yeah, yeah, I know: Cool story, bro.
“I got twelve Korean teenagers in a tiger cage that can draw a fucking dog
wearing a cape!” (<— Best Anthony Michael Hall quote ever)
speaking of quitters —
can someone help identify the movie/scene where this term for ill fitting socks with bad elastic came from?
i found some stuff with mel gibson hamming it up during the lethal weapon 2 days – but i have a distinct memory of a scene with the socks and all.
google has failed me.
I was in a long distance relationship where I would drive CT every weekend to see my girl. Every weekend we watched either BASEketball, Freddy Got Fingered, or Fear and Loathing each time. She was a keeper.
Also, “I don’t see two LeBarons… Where’s YOUR LeBaron, Freddy? Where’s yourLe Baron? How many LeBarons? Are there TWO LeBarons?”
I sob with helpless laughter every time I see the “daddy would you like some sausage” bit.
Filmmakers should not get involved with these projects. Studios don’t want filmmakers at the helm, and the audience will drool down their double chins onto their XXXL fanboy Tshirts no matter how shitty it is, so long as it’s loud and big and has a tie in with Taco Bell.
Considering you hate the masses and audiences so much, you must have never seen Star Wars, Indiana Jones, Roger Rabbit, any movie Disney has ever made (animation and live action), Back to the Future, Lord of the Rings, Titanic, Avengers, Shrek, Austin Powers, etc. We all know you refused to see any Michael Bay movie even though you kind of liked The Rock. You champion foreign films, but still can identify Angelina Jolie and Kim Kardashian.
GTFO with your fedora wearing sense of self indulgence and over-inflated sense of superiority. We get it, you like watching more niche films, congrats, truly. But get off your high horse and lighten up Francis. It’s a big world out there, sometimes a little junk food film does the mind good.
@Had To Be Said – why do I wear Fedora’s? am I hipster? again, you must attack in order to avoid seeing, I guess. Maybe you can make just as much money by selling a good product, and not… you know, spending equal to the production cost on promotion. Maybe spend as much effort on story as CGI.
@ underbra get with the fire and dieing already.
Your generalization of the sorts of people who enjoy movies that may not speak to any message other than “boom…pow….WOW” speaks to an assumption they are all stupid cows. My comeback to your over-generalization with no comprehension was to class you as a fedora wearing, neckbeard having, lonely soul who hates things that are popular because you are “far too intelligent for such drivel”. You’re obviously not. You’re just another film snob who wants to sound like the smartest guy in the room, even when no one cares. Like if everyone was talking about football, you’d bring up the election in India. If we were discussing Led Zeppelin vs. Rolling Stones, you’d bring up some local band. Marvel IS putting out a good product. They DO know how to make a good movie. You seem to want something more like “Captain America 3: Apocalypse Now” and that just can’t happen. This isn’t just an artform, it is a business also and any argument to the contrary is just false. Indie filmmakers are to studios as a local coffee shop is to Starbucks, that’s all. The better films find a way to balance telling a good story and selling a marketable story and for a summer tentpole, that’s all we can ask for.
@underball Well said, sir.
You’re not a hipster, AB. You’re a loser. A guy who has to announce to everyone how different he is, because he gets no attention otherwise. Nobody fucking cares how much of a snob you are. You can appreciate indie films without being a mouthy know-it-all about it.
“…have Rudd and Douglas sitting in a pub for 3/4 of the movie whimsically decrying adulthood, then throw in a few awful shaky cam action scenes set to weirdo 80′s British Dance music?”
I would watch that movie so fucking hard.
@Antbaby Machete Squad Leader A girl I dated for a minute when I lived in CT is the one who stole my FGF dvd. Was her name Kim? I bet her name was Kim.
Also: “I’ve learned a lot, Dad.”
“I can see that.”
“No, more than just how to whack off an elephant.”
@Back to Sutures. Nah her name was Mel. She lived in Windsor Locks, like right by the airport (the one landmark in all of Windsor Locks). I did end up with her copy at FGF when we broke up though.
“That’s it. That’s all my money gone. That’s a million dollars. Gone. Easy come, easy go.”
Huh, that quote from Tom Green was pretty great. The fact that he was able to convey that story while also acknowledging that he’d act differently if given the chance was pretty circumspect.
FWIW he did shoot a pretty cool proof-of-concept Ant-Man action scene.
“FORTY. MILLION. FUCKING DEUTSCHMARK.”
I think on the “comics biz” side of this it’s really not that weird for there to be editorial oversight controlling where characters end up. With the more fringe-y characters they seem to still find ways to have fun with it though, like when they killed the Punisher and made him “Franken-Castle” or when they did “Space Punisher.” But the characters belong to the company and I’m sure they have to approve things.
Now Wright should create his own Ant-Man ripoff character and get another studio to put it out.