Edgar Wright Explains His Ant-Man Departure

Edgar Wright was “heartbroken” to leave Ant-Man.

The Baby Driver filmmaker had been hired to write and direct the Marvel Studios movie – which starred Michael Douglas and Paul Rudd – before it was decided someone else would write the script, and the director admits he became “less emotionally invested” as a result, though it was still a wrench to leave the blockbuster.

Speaking on Variety’s ‘Playback’ podcast, Edgar – whose 2014 departure from the project was attributed to “creative differences” – said: “I think 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. It was a really heartbreaking decision to have to walk away after having worked on it for so long, because me and Joe Cornish in some form — it’s funny some people say, ‘Oh they’ve been working on it for eight years’ and that was somewhat true, but in that time I had made three movies, so it wasn’t like I was working on it full time. 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 thinking if I do one of these movies I would like to be the writer-director. 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.”

Following the release of his latest movie Baby Driver, the 43-year-old filmmaker recently admitted he is unsure what’s next for him.

Edgar has been attached to a movie adaptation of young adult book Grasshopper Jungle by Andrew A. Smith for some time, and whilst he says work on that is “in the mix”, it’s not the only thing he’s planning.

He said when asked if he was developing the novel: “Potentially. It’s one of a couple of things that I’m developing. It’s a book that I really enjoyed and there’s a good screenplay and stuff. The exact next thing I don’t have entirely worked out, but that is one of the things in the mix, yeah. The book was really good, really interesting way of doing a coming-of-age movie and I thought it was really progressive as well.”

There’s also sci-fi horror flick Collider, which Edgar started working on with fellow filmmaker J.J. Abrams in 2012, which the star says is also “in the mix”, but development has been slow because it’s an “ambitious idea”.