Marvel Studios has always had a habit of relying on a core group of writers to work on multiple projects, but after the reception to Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania, there’s a lot of people out there who don’t want Jeff Loveness to become one of them.
Even though the first two installments in the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s tiniest standalone franchise shared a combined total of nine writers – with leading man Paul Rudd the only scribe to be credited on both – whittling that down to just one for the recently-released threequel hasn’t worked wonders.
In fact, Loveness’ turgid and exposition-heavy screenplay for Quantumania has torpedoed the excitement for Avengers: The Kang Dynasty for many based solely on his involvement, but things could get a lot worse if Kevin Feige catches wind of director Peyton Reed revealing to Collider that the former Rick and Morty staffer is a huge fan of the X-Men when asked if he’d be interested in tackling another MCU property.
“Yeah, I think so, I mean it would have to be the right thing. I’m not an X-Men guy. Jeff Loveness, he’s an X-Men guy. I love the X-Men, I love watching X-Men movies. I don’t want to make an X-Men movie. That’s what’s great about Marvel because there’s this infinite… The ones that are interesting to me now are kind of the lesser. I mean, Ant-Man at the time – we knew Ant-Man, he was a founding member of the Avengers, but in terms of the public consciousness, he was probably a B-level, maybe a C-level character. Who knows, it depends on your point of view. I love that about him.”
If Michael Waldron can go from Loki to Secret Wars via Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, with Loveness another Rick and Morty alum to be handed two major projects in quick succession, then there’s always a chance he could try and leverage his fandom to land the X-Men gig. Looking at how Quantumania‘s screenplay has been greeted, let’s hope not.