Earlier this summer, the saga of Edgar Wright leaving Ant-Man and being replaced by Peyton Reed unfolded over just two weeks. Speaking at a Q&A for the upcoming Guardians of the Galaxy, at which footage from Avengers: Age of Ultron was shown and can be read about by clicking here, IGN asked Marvel Studios President Kevin Feige why he decided on Reed to direct the film, which allowed him to open about about the process:
“Peyton is someone that I’ve been a fan of for a long time. People may not remember, though probably your readers remember, that he was attached to Fantastic Four more than 10 years ago. We spent a lot of time together? and I got along with Peyton very, very well and he had awesome ideas and an awesome vision for the movie, and for various reasons he ended up leaving that movie…’Peyton was always on our lists, and so when this happened and Edgar [Wright template=’galleryview’]–> said ‘Not for me’ we met with a handful of people, but Peyton was always one that I thought would be great.
“It was not a slam-dunk that he would just step into it and do it. He wanted to be sure that he was wasn’t just inheriting something or following someone else’s lead. Or wasn’t inheriting something that the evil studio had watered down to be something bad. I kept saying, ‘You can either read what’s online, or come in and talk to us and look at all this stuff.’ He looked at everything, he talked with us, and he said ‘Number one, I agree with the direction you?re going in. And number two, I can add to it.’ And he has ? the movie is in as good a shape as it’s ever been right now.’
Starring Paul Rudd, Michael Douglas, Evangeline Lilly, David Dastmalchian, Patrick Wilson and Corey Stoll, Ant-Man is scheduled for release on July 17, 2015.
