Marvel Studios hired Edgar Wright to write and direct Ant-Man in 2006. However, in the time it took for him to finish the Cornetto Trilogy, the MCU changed a great deal. What was once a standalone superhero movie now needed to fit into a much larger narrative, and the filmmaker wasn't happy when in-house writers made some changes to his and Joe Cornish's script.
Before departing the project over "creative differences," Wright shot test footage, which premiered at Comic-Con and even cast Paul Rudd to play Scott Lang.
Some of Wright's ideas made it into the movie released in 2015, but by that point, Rudd and Adam McKay had taken a pass at the screenplay, adding different jokes, the opening S.H.I.E.L.D. flashback, The Falcon, and a larger role for Hope Van Dyne (plans to make Hank Pym the villainous Black Ant were also scrapped).
Talking to The Playlist about The Running Man, Wright once again looked back at his MCU movie that never was. "You’re not still losing sleep over that, are you?" he joked. "I didn’t regret my decision to leave at all. I had started working on that film long before even 'Iron Man' came out."
"By the time it came around, they had established the brand, the continuity, and even a certain way of making a movie," he continued. "So the chance to do something really different was going away."
Wright hasn't taken a crack at another superhero property since, and as of now, still has no intentions of doing so. "Several years afterwards, I’d get scripts saying, 'This is a revisionist superhero movie!' And I’d think, aren’t they all revisionist now? It would be more groundbreaking to make a straight-up one. So no, 12 years later, I’m still on what I call a 'cape break.'"
So, it seems neither Marvel Studios nor DC Studios will be able to tempt him to tell a superhero story.
Wright has previously said that the only MCU cameo we'd have seen in his Ant-Man was set to come right at the end of the movie. He's also confirmed that the version of Scott Lang he and Cornish wrote was an actual criminal rather than someone who only went to prison because he'd tried to do the right thing by exposing his corrupt ex-employer.
Ant-Man was fun, but it sure is hard not to wish we'd ended up seeing this version of the movie. Peyton Reed did a fine job, but if Ant-Man and The Wasp and Ant-Man and The Wasp: Quantumania proved anything, it's that the best parts of Ant-Man were likely carried over from Wright and Cornish's script.
Let us know your thoughts on these comments from Wright in the usual place.