Adam McKay Discusses Rewriting ANT-MAN, How Much of Edgar Wright's Script is Left and Why He Couldn't be Director



Back in April, The Daily SuperHero was the very first website to report that Marvel's Ant-Man was delaying its production from its initial May filming date. Originally, it was thought this was due to a delay in the construction of the new Pinewood Studios facility in Atlanta. In actuality, it was due to something much bigger, Marvel Studios and writer/director Edgar Wright parting ways after working together for nearly a decade.

Even though many websites ignored the initial report of the delay until The Hollywood Reporter confirmed it at a month later — which happens all the time here, check the scoop tracker — and others criticized the report stating it was not true, it became fact. Regardless, it took Marvel several weeks to announce director Peyton Reed was hired to direct and Adam McKay (Anchorman) was hired for Ant-Man rewrites.

What wasn't reported was how McKay had already been working on rewrites with Ant-Man leading actor Paul Rudd for a few months prior to the official announcement. Recently, McKay sat down with Collider.com to discuss his rewrites.

“[Rudd] called me when Edgar Wright stepped away from the project and told me what was going on. I went and met with Marvel, and I was a little dubious just because I’m friends with Edgar and I didn’t know what the story was, and then when I kind of heard what happened, that Edgar had parted ways, and then I saw their materials, I was like, ‘God this is pretty cool’. Ultimately I didn’t want to jump in as a director, I had too many other projects going and it was too tight, but I thought, ‘You know what, I can rewrite this, and I can do a lot of good by rewriting it.’ 
“I’ve always known Paul Rudd’s a really good writer from improvising with him on set, but I had no idea he was that good—he’s really great with dialogue. So the two of us holed up in hotel rooms on the east and west coast, and I think it was like six to eight weeks we just ground it out and did a giant rewrite of the script. I was really proud of what we did, I really thought we put some amazing stuff in there and built on an already strong script from Edgar Wright and sort of just enhanced some stuff.”

McKay then discussed how much of Wright's original script was cut out and how much he changed and cleaned up.

"We added some new action beats. I grew up on Marvel Comics so the geek in me was in heaven that I got to add a giant action sequence to the movie; I was so excited. So we did, we added some cool new action. There’s a lot that’s already in there from what Edgar did, there’s a lot of dialogue and character still in there. 
"We just shaped the whole thing, we just tried to streamline it, make it cleaner, make it a little bigger, a little more aggressive, make it funnier in places—we just basically did a rewrite. Edgar had a really good script. But we just had a blast, and Rudd was just so much fun to write with. I walked away saying, ‘Hey, you and I gotta write a script together.’”

Ant-Man releases in theaters on July 17, 2015.


To read more about Ant-Man, click right here.