Ant-Man To Be Funny, But Not THAT Funny

When it was announced that Edgar Wright would be writing the script for Marvel Comics’ superhero flick Ant-Man, the assumption was that it would be a comedy instead of a “regular” superhero movie.

If you don’t know who he is, Wright is the very funny British guy who wrote and directed the now classic Shaun of the Dead as well as the excruciatingly funny parody of buddy-cop-action films Hot Fuzz.

Wright has said from the get-go that Ant-Man wouldn’t be a flat-out comedy, but the assumption has always been that it would still be at least very heavy on the humor side of things. However in a recent interview with Piq Mag, he re-iterated that the core of the film is not comedy:

“I wrote ['Ant-Man'] for Marvel and I’m in the process of doing a second draft. I had a lot of fun writing that script, I wrote it with this guy Joe Cornish, who is a really funny UK writer. It’s not really an out-and-out comedy. I think some people assume that it must be a spoof, but it’s not really. I guess it’s as funny as something like ‘Iron Man’ is, it’s on that level of entertainment, really.”

With the success of Iron Man, a superhero most people have never heard of, maybe he’s taking the right track on this. Of course billionaire playboy who wears cool armor is an easier sell than a scientist who can shrink down to the size of an ant.

Wright goes on to say:

“It’s a big, high concept, special effects comic book adaptation, and very character-led and we found a way of… I guess in a similar way to Iron Man, the thing that worked with that and hopefully will with this is that it’s a different way of seeing a superhero origin, because you’ve seen so many of them and we really tried to figure out a fresh take on that story. So it’s definitely a Marvel film but it’s got a little twist on it in terms of the way that it plays out.”

Although Edgar Wright is brilliant, his films haven’t seen much financial success here in the U.S. Maybe Ant-Man will finally bring him the success he deserves over here. Of course who knows when this movie will reach theaters – although it’s been mentioned prominently in the past in reference to Marvel’s movie slate, the recent list of movie title logos did not list this film among the releases between now and summer 2011. The first draft of the script is completed and he’s working on a second, but that’s as much movement as we have on the project.

Source: PiqMag via Comics2Film