Paul Rudd is usually all smiles, but he was a little more solemn during the Comic-Con press junket this weekend, especially when the topic shifted to the departure of his Ant-Man director, Edgar Wright. Speaking to reporters from iGN after the Marvel Panel on Saturday night – one that did not live up to fans’ lofty expectations – Rudd revealed that he deeply misses his old collaborator.
“It was pretty bumpy, for sure. I’m really sad about it,” he said about Wright’s walking away from a project that had been in development for years. “Edgar’s brilliant and Edgar brought me on. Edgar’s my friend. I still talk to Edgar just about every day almost.”
However, despite the Shaun of the Dead director’s absence, Rudd remained optimistic about the road the film is currently on. It helped that his Anchorman director, Adam McKay, joined the project as a writer and helped to reshape the story in Wright’s absence. “I love where we’re at now. it’s opened up and grown in such a new and exciting way,” Rudd reveals before touting the merits of the film’s new director, Peyton Reed.
“Peyton is a really smart, really passionate visionary when it comes to this kind of stuff. He’s a comic-book fan. He knows the world. This is his 20th Comic-Con. [The film] was in terra firma there for a while. But my enthusiasm and excitement and passion is certainly there for where we’re at now and what Peyton’s going to do. While I love Edgar and certainly hope to work with him, I am excited about this new direction and hopefully it’ll turn out ok.”
While the Marvel panel did show some new test footage of visual effects in a clip that featured voice-over from Michael Douglas (as Hank Pym) and Rudd (as Scott Lang), the news that the script was not yet finished did not make fans any more comfortable with the film’s beleaguered production.
Ant-Man, which now has Corey Stoll and Evangeline Lilly on board, begins shooting in August.