Screen Rant » ant-man

Pixar To Produce Marvel’s Ant-Man?

Rob Keyes — Sun, 06 Sep 2009 15:20:40 +0000

Pixar Wants Marvel’s Ant-Man? And so it begins…

The last time we touched on the Ant-Man project by Marvel Studios here at Screen Rant was back in July when we reported that Edgar Wright, the man behind Hot Fuzz and Shaun of the Dead, would be prioritizing Baby Driver as his next film.

For Marvelites, that news meant that his Ant-Man live-action adaptation would be delayed for a while, likely to 2012 (where it tentatively sits now) or later.

Well, if Disney wants that movie out sooner… there’s always Pixar, right? I’m just kidding of course. Or am i? As it turns out, they’re interested in actually doing that movie…

With Disney moving on in and pocketing the ‘House of Ideas,’ things could be different for the future of Marvel films. There will no doubt be a desire to increase the production from Marvel Studios, to push out more superhero blockbusters from the plethora of unused characters ripe for feature film debuts.

According to reports, it seems that Pixar may want to help make that happen for one character in particular: Ant-Man. They seem to think he’d be perfect for their animated style of movie-making and while that may be true, I don’t want that to happen.

With The Avengers opening at the top of summer 2012, the roster will likely (read: hopefully) include the key roster members from the early days of the Avengers comics – Ant-Man being one of them – A live-action Ant-Man just to be clear.

What many fans have suspected is that Ant-Man could debut as a comedic support character in that team-up film and have his own solo origins movie that year or shortly after since the studio has allocated their resources to pushing out the key character films first: Thor, Iron Man 2, The First Avenger: Captain America.

If Pixar were given the go-ahead for an animated stylistic Ant-Man, it wouldn’t fit with the current universe they have now and it would ruin the continuity and the long-term plan set in motion by Marvel Studios. Even worse is that it would represent and embody the exact fears of those who’ve been worried about the Disney-Marvel deal since it was announced last week.

In my mind, let Pixar do their thing, let Marvel Studios do theirs. Disney should focus on helping them expand to make more instead of transferring them to other subsidiaries.

Click to continue reading ‘Pixar to Produce Marvel’s Ant-Man?’

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Edgar Wright’s ‘Baby Driver’ Delays ‘Ant-Man?’

Ross Miller — Sun, 12 Jul 2009 23:18:26 +0000

With Edgar Wright currently hard-at-work on his comic book adaptation, Scott Pilgrim Vs The World, us Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz (both of which he directed) fans are left rightly wondering what he’s got lined up next. A lot of us assumed it would be the comic book adaptation, Ant-Man.

We were wrong.

Wright’s involvement in the Marvel-based project first surfaced almost two years ago, with him later saying that the adaptation will be funny but not in a spoof kind of way. It’s one of those projects that’s presumed to be still on the way, but courtesy of Empire, we got some news that could mean that Wright’s Ant-Man may be further away than we think.

So if not Ant-Man, what’s Wright got his eye straight after he’s done with Scott Pilgrim? Well, he told Empire recently that he wants to make a film called Baby Driver. Don’t worry, we hadn’t heard of it either. Here’s what he had to say:

“I’d like to make Baby Driver next if possible… On this film (Scott Pilgrim) and other things I’ve been blogging furiously and putting up a photo every day, but I think when I do that one I’d like to go completely silent for once. Probably because it’s not an adaptation or anything, or a sequel to anything else. I’d like to just make it in private, basically.”

Apparently, Baby Driver has been in the cards for a while now, with a news update on the official Edgar Wright website giving us a description that it’s, “a wild spin on the action and crime genre which will be set in the US.” Do we read that as Hot Fuzz in the US? (Hot Pigs, perhaps?). It seems kind of strange Wright would go for this one first, considering both Ant-Man and the yet-to-be-named third part of the “three-flavor Cornetto trilogy,” (parts one and two are Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz) were announced first.

However, the reason Wright has given seems solid and believable to me – at least a couple of the movies Wright’s worked on so far have involved some sort of constant news updating (particularly Scott Pilgrim). So, a break from that probably seems very appealing to him at the moment.

It seems that this news could mean the delay of Ant-Man. Even though there was no official release date set for the comic book movie, we all still expected it’d come along fairly soon, especially with a director already in-toe. The last word on the script front was that it was being revised, but that status hasn’t been updated since. I’m sure we’ll still get Ant-Man with Wright at the helm at some point, but now it seems it’ll be later rather than sooner.

Do you think Edgar Wright’s interest in doing this Baby Driver movie will mean a delay of Ant-Man?

Ant-Man is currently in the early development stages, and doesn’t have a release date set as of yet (although a general release date of 2010 has been mentioned). Baby Driver doesn’t have a release date yet, either.

Source: Empire

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Did The Writers Strike Hurt This Summer’s Movies?

Heath McKnight — Wed, 06 May 2009 04:13:57 +0000

We all remember the Writers Guild of America (WGA) strike that lasted 100 days (from late 2007 to early 2008) and cost Hollywood a couple of billion dollars in lost wages and revenue. Sure, plenty of movies went into production anyway so there would be at least some new movies, but without writers to do onset re-writes has the quality suffered?

For example, the recent James Bond film Quantum of Solace; writer Paul Haggis turned in the script right before the WGA strike began in November 2007, and the film started shooting soon after. Production was well underway by the time the strike ended, so it is possible they had some rewrites done, especially if there were any major reshoots.

The movie opened November 2008, and while our own Niall Browne gave it 4 out of 5 stars, Screen Rant’s owner and Editor-in-Chief Vic Holtreman had this to say:

“Too much action at the expense of story/character development. I thought they turned Bond into nothing but a revenge-crazed murderer. He was closer to The Punisher than 007.”

Of course, Vic also felt the directing of the action sequences wasn’t good at all: too many close-ups, fast-cutting and jerky camera work, something that was big for a while in films including Batman Begins, the first Transformers, and the latter Jason Bourne films. But the previous Bond film (Casino Royale) really blended great writing with terrific stunts and action set pieces.

Let’s move onto movies coming out this year. Terminator Salvation went into production as the WGA strike was ending, but that didn’t give the crew much time to do any major work on the screenplay before cameras rolled. I’m guessing that onset rewrites happened. We’ll see how the overall quality of the latest Terminator film is when it opens May 21, 2009.

And what about X-Men Origins: Wolverine? It may have shredded the box office with an $87 million opening weekend and Vic gave it 3 out of 5 stars, but the critics have ravaged it and fan word-of-mouth isn’t doing so great. I expect a major drop this coming weekend and that’s only partly because Star Trek is coming out. Could the quality of Wolverine suffered because of the WGA strike? I’d say yes, but we may never know because of the involvement of the studio, director, etc. And there were some expensive rewrites and reshoots done earlier this year.

Speaking of Star Trek, I believe its release date was bumped from December 2008 to May 2009 partly of the WGA strike. JJ Abrams and his writers couldn’t even touch the script when shooting began at the height of the strike, and I wonder if they delayed the film to do rewrites and reshoots?

Angels and Demons had to delay the start of production for months because the script just wasn’t up to par when the strike happened. I also think Thor and Ant-Man were delayed a year or two because of the strike, though it looks like an Ant-Man movie may not happen until after The Avengers.

Michael Bay worked on his own ideas for Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen while the WGA strike happened. Most of it was probably visual effects set pieces, but once the strike ended, his three writers (Alex Kurtzman, Roberto Orci, and Ehren Krueger) were holed up in a hotel to pound out the script in a short time to get the film ready for production.

We won’t know about the quality of some of these and other films until they open, but I do believe we’ll see some movies that went into production without the much-needed onset rewrites, or even a script that was ready to go before cameras.

What do you think? Have movies that have opened, or are coming out, suffered because of the WGA strike?

Source: Screen Rant

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Movie News Grab Bag July 25, 2008

Heath McKnight — Fri, 25 Jul 2008 16:14:02 +0000

In today’s Movie News Grab Bag, I’ve got a confirmation on the director and writer of the RoboCop sequel, X-Files: I Want To Believe is getting poor reviews, and my theory on why Ant-Man isn’t on the release slate yet.

RoboCop 4 (unless they ignore parts 2 and 3 and do a reboot): Darren Aronofsky, director of Pi and the one movie I liked but I’ll never watch again, Requiem For a Dream, has officially signed on to direct the RoboCop sequel, set further in the future after the program was shut down. Will it be a new RoboCop, or will Murphy live again? David Self (Road to Perdition) is writing the script. Sounds like it’ll be fun, especially since it isn’t a remake!

So I’ve been looking over at Rotten Tomatoes to see how X-Files: I Want To Believe is doing, ratings-wise. Not so good with a 30% (so far) “rotten” rating. Sure, it’s still a little early, but wow, that’s not looking so good. Ebert seemed to like it, though, but others complained that it was more like a boring, long episode than a movie.

Ant-Man: Edgar Wright told ComingSoon.net/SuperHeroHype.com that his adaptation of Scott Pilgrim will come out first, and that Ant-Man isn’t even on the release schedule for Marvel Studios. My theory is that a draft was written and budgeted and, following The Incredible Hulk debacle, Marvel decided to launch a film franchise of the tiny hero after The Avengers comes out. It’s a safe way to test the waters. We’ll find out if that’s the case when The Avengers opens in 2011.

Also, on the fantasy movie front, a couple of news items caught my eye today, so I thought I’d write up a quick movie news grab bag.

First up is Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland 3D movie, of which I’m getting excited about. Burton and Alice, a match made in heaven! Anyway, Burton found his Alice in Australian actress Mia Wasikowska. The film will go into production soon with a projected release date of 2010.

I think this will be a fun movie, and yet another reason to go to the theaters as 3D becomes huge. The movie is from Disney, so I wonder how dark they’ll let Burton get. By the way, here’s a look at some 3D movies coming out (or already out).

And then we have director Spike Jonze’s Where the Wild Things Are, probably the most frustrating thing I can write about today. The movie that has had more problems than even the fourth Exorcist movie a few years back, that resulted in two versions! Remember that? Funny how all these movies are from Warner Bros., but I digress…

Anyway, as our own Niall Browne reported recently, the WWA movie was taken off WB’s release slate (originally set to open October 2008). It’s opening exactly one year later, and it looks like major work will be done after a disastrous test screening.

While Jonze will remain involved, Ain’t It Cool News’ “Beaks” had a chance to talk to one of the producers, Gary Goetzman, who said that while WB and Jonze may have differing visions on the film, he also confirmed the studio is backing Spike 100%. Nothing new, right?

Wrong. In the article, Goetzman mentions, “Final cut Spike,” which is a reference to the holiest of holies for a director, being able to have final say on a film. About 10 years ago, a bunch of films came out that gave directors final cut, and they all bombed, including the excruciatingly long Meet Joe Black.

I’m curious if Spike Jonze does indeed have final cut, and if he’s willing to watch that go away so he and the studio can fix the film. And keep the running time shorter than 2-3 hours.

This is a tragedy and I hope a great film comes out of it. We’ll be keeping our eyes on the ongoing saga of this film.

Sources: Alice, Hollywood Reporter via Ain’t It Cool News; Wild Things, Ain’t It Cool News, Deadline Hollywood Daily, Rotten Tomatoes, and Super Hero Hype!

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Which Heroes Will Marvel Recruit For The Avengers?

Kofi Outlaw — Wed, 25 Jun 2008 04:58:19 +0000

Rumor is beginning to circulate about which of its top-shelf heroes Marvel plans to recruit for the upcoming, and much-hyped, Avengers movie. Some choices are obvious, due to not-so-subtle foreshadows dropped in both Iron Man and The Incredible Hulk. And with the internet recently abuzz with news that Marvel studios was pushing to snag A-list stars for its Captain America movie, that character’s inclusion in the Avengers project is certain. So that’s three Avengers we can expect to see, but who else will make the roster?

According to Iron Man director Jon Favreau:

“the ones Marvel is talking about now are Captain America, Hulk, Thor, Ant-Man and Iron Man. I would love to see that.”

Marvel Studios President of Production Kevin Feige has also alluded to the fact that Marvel hopes to establish a cinematic continuity in which its characters would be able to “cross into each other’s adventures and occasionally team up if there’s a foe too great for any one of them to handle.” Just what Avengers hopes to accomplish.

But it’ll be a hard feat to pull off, in my opinion. I mean sure, what fanboy hasn’t gotten giddy at the notion of seeing all his favorite heroes battling it out on screen all at once (does that qualify as an orgy?) And reading the quote above, it seems as though Kevin Feige is already drinking the super-group-movie Kool-Aid. However, let’s try an remember that this is the MOVIE industry we are talking about, not the COMIC BOOK industry. Only counting the two movies from Marvel Studios already in theaters, to do The Avengers, you’re talking about getting Robert Downey Jr. to share screen time with Ed Norton, not to mention CGI effect$ out the yin-yang for Shellhead and the Hulk. Factor in Cap, Ant-man, Thor, a CGI boomerang shield, shrinking/growing F/X and CGI lightning, and THEN tell me what the price tag for an Avengers flick will likely be. (And if it will be worth its box office returns.)

Currently, Marvel’s game plan seems to revolve around establishing successful film franchises for each of the individual Avengers heroes, then taking those dividends and investing them in the Avengers project. Iron Man and The Incredible Hulk have both had their turns in theaters, to great or middling success; Thor is tenatively scheduled for a 2010 release; The First Avenger: Captain America is set for 2011; and Ant-Man is still working on nailing down a release date, (though it’s rumored that it will be helmed by Edgar Wright, director of Shaun Of The Dead. A great choice.)

Can the house that Stan Lee built crank out three more box office hits to keep an Avengers film afloat? Can so many big-name, bigger-ego, actors really play nice and make an ensemble blockbuster? Has the term “ensemble blockbuster” ever been used before??? (If not, I claim coining rights.) And will the budget for an Avengers movie really end up being higher than the budget of NASA’s last mission? Only time will tell for sure, but in the meantime, let us know your opinion anyway.

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Ant-Man To Be Funny, But Not THAT Funny

Vic Holtreman — Tue, 24 Jun 2008 16:22:33 +0000

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

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Marvel Studios Movie Update

Heath McKnight — Thu, 20 Mar 2008 19:42:01 +0000

So what’s happening with Marvel Studios? We’ve got the invincible-looking Iron Man opening May 2, 2008 and The Incredible Hulk smashing into theaters June 13. But what about the other planned movies, such as Thor and Ant-Man, both rumored for release in 2009? What about other movies?

Marvel’s ultimate goal is to have total control over the filmed adaptations of their characters; mission accomplished. However, their other goal of two films per year appears to be in danger. Due to the Writers Strike debacle, things have been delayed. Unlike a major studio, which has billions to spend on 24/7 re-writes, Marvel Studios only has about $525 million from Merrill Lynch, though that number could be higher with other investments, with movie budgets ranging from $45 million to $165 million. Paramount Pictures is distributing (except Hulk, which is Universal–a holdover from the Ang Lee film).

Based on reports, it looks like Marvel may have already spent around $130 million on Iron Man and $150 million on Hulk. So where does that leave Ant-Man and Thor (still being re-written to get the budget down)? With script re-writes, apparently. Already the directors (Edgar Wright and Matthew Vaughn, respectively) are actively working on new projects.

In 2006, former Marvel Studios head Avi Arad said the director he wanted for Captain America, at the time their hoped-for debut film (now Iron Man), wasn’t available until 2009, but the strike may have hurt that (and no, I don’t know who that director was). So Cap in 2009 may not happen (Colin Ferguson for Cap!).

So if Vaughn is waiting for Thor and working on a film adaptation of Mark Millar’s Kick-Ass comic, while Wright moves onto Scott Pilgrim: Precious Little Life before making Ant-Man, what do we have for 2009? Do we even have one movie? I’d say yes, and it could very well be…Nick Fury: Agent of SHIELD. It’s pure speculation on my part, but if rumors are true, we’ll be seeing Fury in Iron Man, played by Samuel L. Jackson (since they based Ultimates Fury on the awesome Jackson), so why not?

I’m extremely excited for Iron Man, and Hulk is looking killer; I want to see Marvel keep up with the momentum, so let’s keep our fingers crossed that 2009 brings more Marvel Studios awesomeness! Yes, I know X-Men Origins: Wolverine opens then, but that’s a FOX movie first, Marvel second.

Source: Ain’t It Cool News (Vaughn’s next) and AICN again (Wright’s next)

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Ant-Man Being Done By The ‘Hot Fuzz’ Gang?

Vic Holtreman — Fri, 31 Aug 2007 16:37:09 +0000

How the heck did I miss this? The boys behind Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz are going to be making the Ant-Man movie! For those of you who don’t know, Ant-Man is a Marvel Comics character who uses technology which allows him to shrink down to the size of an insect and can also communicate with the little creepy-crawlers.

Yes, not exactly an “A-List” superhero, but he was a member of The Avengers.

The main guy behind the movies mentioned above is Edgar Wright, but according to him while Ant-Man will be funny, it won’t be the same sort of humor seen in “Shaun” or “Fuzz.” Here is his response when asked about the tone of the film:

“I don’t want it to be a superhero spoof, because superhero spoofs and man-in-tights spoofs have absolutely been done to [expletive] death — after ‘The Incredibles’, which is sort of the last word on superhero parody. So it’s going to be something different. It’s going to be funny, but in a different way other than just, ‘Hey, he’s small!’ [laughs] When it was first pitched to me, somebody said, ‘It’s Honey, I Shrunk the Superhero.’ And I said, “I would do everything except that film.” [laughs]

There will be no other “Avengers” in the film, either… the film will be just about the title character.

I’m not sure how they’re going to balance the comic book roots of the character while making this one funny, considering the history of the Scott Lang version of Ant-Man: Imprisoned burglar, wife divorces him and he has a daughter that is deathly ill. I guess if anyone can pull it off, though, it’s these guys.

Sources: NewsOK, Premiere

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