What on Earth is going on this weekend?
Less than 24 hours after Disney and Edgar Wright announced the director has decided to leave the long-in-development Ant-Man, Latino Review is reporting that Drew Goddard, director of The Cabin in the Woods, will no longer be involved with Daredevil, the planned Netflix series from Marvel Studios. Goddard was supposed to write and direct the pilot episode as well as act as showrunner and executive producer for the 13-episode series.
UPDATE: Less than an hour after Latino Review dropped that bombshell, Marvel.com confirmed it by announcing that Stephen S. DeKnight, creator of the hit Starz series “Spartacus,” has taken over as executive producer and showrunner on the Netflix series. Apparently Goddard pulled out of “Daredevil” back in March when he was assigned to Sony’s planned Sinister Six spin-off movie, although there’s been no announcement of it being greenlit with The Amazing Spider-Man 2 having been in theaters for over a month. Goddard did write the first two episodes before departing and will still be involved as an executive producer.
Marvel Studios is currently looking for a director for the pilot episode of what’s planned to be five 13-episode series for Netflix, which will be joined by “Jessica Jones,” “Iron Fist” and “Luke Cage.”
Latino Review‘s El Mayimbe may have discovered Goddard’s departure while doing research to find out the reason for Wright’s sudden departure from Ant-Man so close to the start of production–he offers some interesting insight into that situation here as well.
Is there a possibility that maybe Goddard stepped away from the Netflix series so that he could take over the directing reins on Ant-Man? Since Disney/Marvel have already stated they have another director in place for Ant-Man, one could easily put two and two together… but only another badly-timed Friday afternoon press release will let us know for sure. (UPDATE: The Deadline story makes it seem like Goddard instead decided to focus on Sinister Six, so that may rule him out as the replacement for Wright on Ant-Man.)
