The Hollywood Reporter has reports Adam McKay (Anchorman, Step Brothers, The Other Guys), Rawson Thurber (We’re the Millers) and Ruben Fleischer (Zombieland, Gangster Squad) are the three top contenders to step in for the departed Edgar Wright to direct Ant-Man for Marvel and Disney.
Of the bunch McKay, to me, is the least likely to take the gig because he has more than enough on his plate to play second fiddle to a production that’s already got a black stain, not to mention a film with a script that still needs finishing and a production start that’s already been delayed from June 2 to July 28 as several key crew members left with Wright. For now, the cast is still intact and I’m assuming Marvel can’t delay much longer or face losing several of the key cast members including Paul Rudd, Michael Douglas, Evangeline Lilly, Patrick Wilson and Corey Stoll, all of which signed on to star in an Edgar Wright-directed Ant-Man, a film, it seems, no longer exists.
Speaking of, Marvel’s Kevin Feige, in the process of sticking to the planned July 17, 2015 release date for Ant-Man, they don’t want anyone with too much of a vision of their own as a source tells THR:
“Kevin Feige [and his top lieutenants] run Marvel with a singularity of vision, but when you take a true auteur and throw him into the mix, this is what you get,” says a source. “They don’t want you to speak up too much or have too much vision. People who have never worked there don’t understand how they operate, but if you trust them, they have an amazing track record.”
So which of these three do you best see able to carry out the Marvel vision and shut up while doing so? Between Thurber and Fleischer, I see Thurber as the easiest to push around. The guy has Dodgeball and We’re the Millers to his name while Fleischer has shown greater promise, despite the demise of Gangster Squad, which I’m not ready to entirely lay at his feet after the unfortunate situation that occurred following the despicable The Dark Knight Rises theater shooting.
Fleischer’s Zombieland, however, may show he has more of the tongue-in-cheek tonal chops of which Marvel has aligned itself, not to mention he’s in need of a layup after both Gangster Squad and 30 Minutes or Less laid eggs at the box office. But is Ant-Man a layup? At this point it looks like an incredibly risky venture for any director to touch.
Personally, I wouldn’t mind seeing Fleischer get the gig, even if I’d rather see him take on something else, but looking at the situation and considering the way Marvel operates, I feel we’re going to end up with a Rawson Thurber Ant-Man that will be just as vanilla as most everything that’s come before it.
I guess we’ll just have to wait to see who the final candidate is, one thing is for certain, it’s not Guardians of the Galaxy director James Gunn who squashed the rumors he would be taking over rather definitively yesterday on Twitter.
https://twitter.com/JamesGunn/statuses/472047447770820611
https://twitter.com/JamesGunn/status/472062029243486208
