Michael Douglas On Edgar Wright’s Departure

Academy Award-winning actor Michael Douglas (“Wall Street”) chatted with Entertainment Weekly to discuss his upcoming western-thriller Beyond The Reach and they slipped in a few questions about Ant-Man. For Marvel, Douglas will be playing Dr. Hank Pym, who will be a mentor to Paul Rudd’s Scott Lang and the inventor of the Ant-Man suit.

Douglas has been a huge star for many decades, and you would figure at some point during his career he would’ve been offered a role in a superhero film, right? “No. I can’t say I was really offered anything in those vein,” Douglas told EW. “I certainly enjoy it now. For me, it reaches another audience, people who maybe aren’t familiar with me. It’s fun to do a big-budgeted movie after scraping and scratching along with a lot of these indies, these labors of love. To be in a picture that’s got a built-in audience and has the tide going with you. I’m ready for it, after struggling and fighting for pictures that you believed in, that are maybe off the beaten path.”

Douglas will certainly get some exposure to a younger generation that isn’t familiar with him since he mainly did a lot of R-rated films like Basic Instinct. Part of that younger demographic will be Douglas’ youngest children who are very excited about his Marvel role. “Oh, it’s like I haven’t done anything in my life before Ant-Man,” he said. “There are so few movies that I could show them when they were growing, because all my pictures were R rated. For years, they thought their mom was the actress and I made pancakes.”

When Douglas signed on to do Ant-Man, Edgar Wright (“Hot Fuzz”) was set to direct the film, but as you know he unexpectedly departed the project and was replaced with Yes Man director Peyton Reed. Did that change have an effect on Douglas? “Not really. I wasn’t directly involved with the script,” Douglas stated. “As far as Hank Pym, that was pretty established from the comic books. For me personally it didn’t [change]. I’m sure tonally and everything for Paul [Rudd]—it’s never pleasant and never easy when those changes happen. Though I think they made it as smooth as possible.”

Marvel’s Ant-Man hits theaters July 17, 2015.

Source: EW

ANT-MAN: Kevin Feige And The Cast Of ANT-MAN Talk More About Edgar Wright’s Departure

As we all already know, Edgar Wright parted ways with Marvel due to creative differences. The writer and director was apparently presented with a version of his script which had undergone a rewrite (without his knowledge) to help better integrate the movie into the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

New details have been revealed about the behind the scenes goings on following Edgar Wright’s Ant-Man departure courtesy of Kevin Feige, Paul Rudd, and Evangline Lilly. When Entertainment Weekly asked Kevin Feige about this, he replied:“It is true that there were disagreements about the direction the script should take. Everything was aboveboard. Everything was done with everybody else’s knowledge. There was a sense of ‘We’re going in this direction, you’re staying in this direction—maybe it’s best that we end as friends.’”

Paul Rudd meanwhile says he was left feeling “devastated” when he learned the news, while Evangeline Lilly’s reveals that, “Marvel knew [that first revised screenplay] wasn’t good. They just knew it was in the direction they wanted.” It was then that Adam McKay and Rudd himself took a crack at the screenplay, with newcomers Gabriel ­Ferrari and Andrew Barrer later coming in for a final polish (however, they don’t appear to have received a writing credit, so it could be that Marvel stuck with the previous iteration or that what they contributed wasn’t enough to warrant a mention). “The bones of it is really Edgar and Joe,” Rudd adds. “It’s been an emotional roller coaster, but I’m very excited now.”