More From Kevin Feige On ANT-MAN; Clarifies Marvel's Relationship With Past Directors
Kevin Feige talks more about parting ways with Edgar Wright over Ant-Man and how Marvel collaborates with directors; "At no point do we hire filmmakers who do everything we say, and at no point do we hire filmmakers that we let just do anything they want." Hit the jump for more!
When it was revealed that Marvel Studios and Edgar Wright had parted ways over Ant-Man, a few different reports surfaced which very much painted the former as the bad guys. Some fans declared that this was a sign that Disney were finally sticking their nose into Marvel's business, while others claimed that the movie could not and should not be made without Wright. Talking to Empire Online, Feige had this to say about people having this new perception of a studio who could previously do no wrong. "I don’t know if we ever thought of ourselves as invincible, quite the opposite. If you start thinking you’re invincible you start making bad decisions. We think we’re very vincible, and worry all the time! No, it’s much more personal than that."
As for the decision to no longer bring Ant-Man to the big screen with the Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz filmmaker, Feige reiterated: "We’ve been with Edgar for eight years, we saw the premiere of a number of his films in this very theatre. The biggest disappointment to me is not that he will not be making the movie. It was determined by him and by us that that would not be the best thing for the movie. The disappointing thing for me is not being able to make a movie with him, right now; it’s just the personal relationship. And it was amicable and we sat in a room together and said this isn’t working. I just wish I or he had figured that out somewhere in the eight years leading up to it. He was nervous about what the perception would be, and I said to Edgar ‘Don’t worry about it, because the perception will be that the evil studio squashes the innocent filmmaker’. That will be the perception no matter what, and that is the perception, but it’s much more complicated than that." As it turns out, that was the perception that the majority had when this news was revealed, but Feige makes it clear that he isn't letting it get to them as he's used to this sort of over the top reaction to such things from long before he was in charge of Marvel's own movie studio.
Talk then turned to what makes Yes Man director Peyton Reed the right choice to direct the movie in Wright's absence, Feige talked more about his good qualities and how the filmmaker is going about working with what was there before Wright's departure and what has changed since. He also revealed when exactly shooting begins. "When Edgar left this project, we talked about a number of different filmmakers and had few a few meetings with a few filmmakers and ending up reaching out to Peyton knowing that Peyton is not a slam dunk. He’s not just, ‘Oh, a movie, I’ll take it’. He had to be convinced that the big bad studio hadn’t squashed the filmmaker, that we were doing what was right for the movie. He read all the previous drafts and everything that had been created and is elevating it, and really having a clear vision of his own to bring this to life. The cast is incredibly engaged and we’re starting on August 18."
"Well, it’s not worth, right now, going into that in super-specifics," Feige added when talk turned to the actual creative reasons for Wright's departure. "I wish it wasn’t as late in the day as it was, but it just had become clear that there was an impasse that we had never reached before. We’ve worked with lots of unbelievable talented filmmakers like Edgar before, and of course there are disagreements along the way." He finished by discussing Marvel's previous collaboration with directors, perhaps going some way to explain why some have decided not to work with them again.