Rumour: ANT-MAN reshoots to bring back plot points from Edgar Wright's draft

Well, this could be an odd turn of events.

We’ve written a lot about Edgar Wright’s much publicized 11th-hour departure from Ant-Man, a movie he started developing for Marvel before there even was a Marvel Cinematic Universe. Wright is one of the most talented filmmakers out there, so seeing what he could do with such an odd-ball character with all of Marvel’s resources behind him, obviously had fans super-stoked. So naturally people were rather upset that we weren’t going to see that vision finally being realized.

While both Marvel and Wright have gone out of their way to assure everybody that there was no bad blood between them, and that the split was merely because Wright’s vision was no longer lining up with what Marvel’s subsequently had planned for their universe, there have been some rumours that stated that this whole split came about because Wright wanted to have Scott Lang (played by Paul Rudd) be a proper criminal, like he was in the original comics. The family-friendly Powers-That-Be over on the Disney lot were apparently not too happy with the lead in one of their movies being a crook though, and ordered a series of rewrites toning down Wright and co-writer Joe Cornish’ more edgier character beats, the sum total of which eventually resulted in Wright and Cornish rather exiting stage left than producing a watered-down version of their story.

But now Latino Review’s Umberto Gonzalez, who has had a very solid track record with inside scoops on the Marvel front, has posted something really intriguing on his Instagram page:

So what I’m hearing on #Marvel’s #AntMan so far is good. They did standard marvel reshoots, but one of the things I heard is that they’re making Scott a criminal again with these reshoots – putting back the plot point they originally demanded be cut from Edgar Wright’s draft.

His claims are being backed up by Badass Digest’s Devin Faraci who is apparently hearing the same thing from his sources, and postulates that we may have a certain Star-Lord to thank for these changes:

“I’ve been hearing that the movie evolved (especially in reshoots) to come back to a place closer to where Wright had it, with Scott Lang as more of a crook when the film opens. I think that pre-Guardians Marvel was freaking out about the roguishness of the character. Post-Guardians it’s clear that the lead being a rogue does not hurt these movies.

As Gonzales mentions, reshoots have become standard for Marvel movies nowadays as they usually go in after filming has wrapped to tweak things for a better film. Could it be that the movie that new director Peyton Reed and screenwriter Adam McKay have produced needed that little extra oomph that Wright had in his draft? We already know that McKay’s script kept in the skeleton of Wright’s story and even many of the action beats he had developed, so maybe they wanted that edginess and moral ambivalence back as well – something that McKay has actually excelled at in his own movies! Just yesterday we heard from actor Bobby Cannavale there was a lot of Guardians-like comedic improvisation on set – a McKay staple normally – so maybe Marvel decided to do some improv of their own to fix things a bit?

There’s no denying that of all Marvel’s upcoming films, Ant-Man is by far their most unsure bet – a fact that a very lacklustre first trailer certainly didn’t help to remedy one bit. And with people clearly not as hyped for it like all their other releases, showing off a much more interesting version of their “hero” that harks closer to arguably their biggest breakout star (lord) of recent years could maybe help to turn fans’ opinions around. I know I would definitely be more excited for it!

Last Updated: March 24, 2015