ANT-MAN.

A 2003 TREATMENT AND A HALL H REEL

HOW EDGAR WRIGHT AND JOE CORNISH SPENT YEARS ON ANT-MAN

Edgar Wright and Joe Cornish wrote a treatment in 2003 for Artisan Entertainment, which held the rights to the character at the time. It was built around Scott Lang as a burglar, a premise that could have gone the Elmore Leonard route. Wright appeared at the 2006 San Diego Comic-Con alongside Jon Favreau to tease Ant-Man, so his involvement was a long one by the time he left in 2014.

Marvel let Wright finish The World’s End first, and in July 2012 he showed unfinished test footage at Comic-Con. The footage showed a Matrix-style hallway where a tiny Ant-Man runs at agents, grows to full size, shrinks again and punches one in the face. SlashFilm said the tone felt unlike other Marvel films and closer to Hot Fuzz.

Casting began under Wright. When Marvel announced Paul Rudd in December 2013, Kevin Feige said Wright had come to the studio with the idea of Rudd and that Marvel felt “a huge sense of relief.” By the time Wright left, Michael Douglas, Evangeline Lilly, Corey Stoll and Michael Peña had joined Rudd in the cast.

MAY 2014: A JOINT STATEMENT, A NEW DIRECTOR AND A SIX-TO-EIGHT-WEEK REWRITE

WHY WRIGHT LEFT, AND WHO TOOK OVER

On 23 May 2014 Marvel and Wright announced that they had parted ways “due to differences in their vision of the film.” The statement called the decision amicable and said the 17 July 2015 release date was unaffected.

Wright was more specific in 2017. He said Marvel had wanted to do a draft without him, and that becoming a director for hire made him less emotionally invested. His diplomatic version was that he wanted to make a Marvel movie but did not think Marvel wanted to make “an Edgar Wright movie.” On a podcast he said he had no regrets about leaving, though he did not want to stand in Hall H twice for a film he never made.

Peyton Reed was confirmed as director in June 2014. His earlier films included Bring It On, Down with Love, The Break-Up and Yes Man. Adam McKay had reportedly been considered as a possible director but was unavailable because of other producing commitments, and he would contribute to the screenplay instead.

McKay described the job in October 2014. Rudd called him when Wright stepped away, and the two spent six to eight weeks in hotel rooms on the east and west coasts grinding out a giant rewrite. In April 2015, ahead of release, a Writers Guild arbitration settled the credits. The screenplay is credited to Edgar Wright & Joe Cornish and Adam McKay & Paul Rudd, while story credit went solely to Wright and Cornish.

A WRIGHT AND CORNISH FOUNDATION, WITH A FALCON FIGHT ADDED

WHAT SURVIVED THE REWRITE, AND WHAT MCKAY AND RUDD ADDED

Reed used the storyboards created under Wright’s watch. McKay said that Edgar had a really good script and that he and Rudd tried to streamline it and make it cleaner, bigger and funnier in places.

The clearest addition is the fight with the Falcon. McKay and Rudd added the scene, and it was McKay’s idea. In a July 2015 interview, Reed said it was not in the original script. By his account McKay pitched that Scott should fight an Avenger and, with Captain America: The Winter Soldier just released, suggested the Falcon. The old Stark warehouse the heist targets became, by the end of Avengers: Age of Ultron, the new Avengers facility.

“Marvel had just pulled the script into their world.”

Evangeline Lilly, December 2014

Lilly said she thought Wright’s idea to blend the Hank Pym and Scott Lang stories was brilliant. She also said his version would have stuck out like a sore thumb in the shared universe, however good it was.

Michael Peña said he had about 12 hours to prepare his monologue as Luis, and that Reed put no pressure on him, saying the film would cut away to another person so he could do whatever he wanted.

A 1989 FACE, A MACRO WORLD AND FIVE KINDS OF ANT

HOW LOLA, DOUBLE NEGATIVE AND METHOD MADE THE FILM SMALL

Jake Morrison was the film’s overall visual effects supervisor, with the work split between several houses. Lola VFX handled de-aging for the opening scene set in 1989, on Michael Douglas, Martin Donovan and Hayley Atwell. Lola used Wall Street from 1987 as its reference for the younger Douglas, worked mostly in compositing and used a younger stand-in actor, Dax Griffin, for texture and movement. The work ran to 28 complex compositing shots, some with multiple characters aging in opposite directions.

For the small-scale world, Double Negative shot real macro photography. Its visual effects supervisor Alex Wuttke said the team shot multiple exposure brackets and multiple focus brackets for each small tile, then stitched the slices back together. Method Studios, under supervisor Greg Steele, created five distinct ant species, and the team deliberately slowed the animation, treating the ants as noble beasts rather than realistic insects, to make them more relatable.

ILM handled the Falcon fight and the subatomic finale, with Russell Earl as its supervisor. Luma Pictures handled water and crowd work for the raid sequence, and The Third Floor produced previsualisation.

THE REWATCH

A MODEST OPENING, A WARM CRITICAL RECEPTION AND A TAG FROM CIVIL WAR

Ant-Man opened to $57.2 million in the US. Going by the weekend estimate of $58 million, that was Marvel Studios’ weakest opening since The Incredible Hulk, which took $55.4 million, though it still finished first. It went on to earn $180.2 million domestically and $339.1 million internationally, for $519.3 million worldwide against a $130 million budget.

Reviews were good but a step below the best Marvel films. Rotten Tomatoes lists an 83% critics’ score from 342 reviews, with a consensus calling it “Marvel thrills on an appropriately smaller scale.” Metacritic’s Metascore is 64 from 44 critic reviews. RogerEbert.com praised it as working as a comic heist picture while still cohering with the wider Marvel universe, and Variety wrote that “less really can be more.”

The film runs 117 minutes. Two scenes play in the credits. In the first, Hank Pym shows Hope van Dyne a prototype Wasp suit. The second shows Captain America and the Falcon with Bucky Barnes, and ends with the Falcon saying he knows a guy. Reed said those were dailies from Civil War that were cut into a very succinct tag.

For a first watch, it sits in the Marvel movies in release order guide directly after Avengers: Age of Ultron, with Fantastic Four (2015) next. In the MCU release order guide it sits between WHIH Newsfront · Season 1 and WHIH Newsfront · Season 2, and in the MCU movies-only order guide it comes directly after Age of Ultron.