Production of Marvel’s Ant-Man movie has gone through its ups and downs; original director Edgar Wright departed, and the script went through rewrites. The movie’s star Paul Rudd even had a hand in it, according to Collider. He and Adam McKay spent two months rewriting it. “The two of us holed up in hotel rooms on the east and west coast,” said McKay, “and I think it was like six to eight weeks we just ground it out and did a giant rewrite of the script. We added some new action beats… There’s a lot that’s already in there from what Edgar did, there’s a lot of dialogue and character still in there.” McKay–who helmed the Anchorman movies–briefly considered directing the movie. “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.'” The movie will be directed by Peyton Reed.
Writer McKay was actually brought in by Rudd, who obviously believes in the project: his name has been attached to the movie for over a year. While Rudd is a likeable actor, as a leading man he is not exactly bankable: it remains to be seen if his brand of comic charm and whimsy, which he has used to lip-sync Tina Turner, to extol the virtues of Donegal, and to invite Kansas City Royals fans to his mom’s house, will translate to success at the box office. Ant-Man opens next summer.