Posted in: Movies | Tagged: ant man, edgar wright, entertainment, film, kevin feige, Marvel Studios, Michael Douglas, paul rudd, peyton reed

Kevin Feige Says Peyton Reed Is The Right Man For Ant-Man

Published Tue, 15 Jul 2014 16:30:51 -0500

by Dan Wickline

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At a screening of Guardians of the Galaxy this morning in London, Marvel Studios' head man Kevin Feige was asked by IGN.com why Peyton Reed was the right man to helm Ant-Man. Reed, who was once being considered to direct Guardians, is stepping in after the recent exit of Edgar Wright.

"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. He's come in to meet on a lot of our movies over the years, in particular Guardians. He had a lot of awesome things to say on Guardians. But James [Gunn] had a slightly more solid take that was of interest to us. But Peyton was always on our lists, and so when this happened and Edgar [Wright] 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.

"It's still very much in the spirit of what Edgar's original pitch was and the entire template of the movie is what Edgar set out and originally came and pitched us maybe eight years ago now. But it's on its way to being the absolute best version of what that movie could have been.

"Peyton is really, really wonderful, and will be proving that soon enough. As I said to the Comic-Con audience a few years ago, 'You might not have heard of [Captain America: The Winter Soldier directors] Joe and Antony Russo, but you're going to be big fans of them soon.' And I'd say the same thing about Peyton Reed now."