Edgar Wright Reached Out to Reconnect with Kevin Feige, Six Years After Walking Off ‘Ant-Man’
Zack Sharf
Edgar Wright and Marvel Studios president Kevin Feige are back on good terms following a falling out that occurred during the development of “Ant-Man.” Speaking to Empire magazine, Wright revealed he reconnected with Feige while guest curating the magazine’s special “Greatest Cinema Moment Ever” issue. Wright was just months away from starting production on “Ant-Man” when he walked away from the movie over creative differences with Marvel. At the time of Wright’s exit, he already cast and wrote the Marvel movie with Joe Cornish. Payton Reed replaced Wright, but Wright and Cornish retained “story by” and co-screenwriter credits.
“I’ll be honest, I had not spoken to Kevin since I walked off ‘Ant-Man’ in 2014,” Wright said. “You know, there wasn’t any real animosity or outright hostility between us, it was all very diplomatic at the time, but in that situation you go your separate ways and there was no reason to get back in touch. So I just had never spoken to him or vice versa. Aside from the movie itself, we had been friends, so it was a sad thing – aside from the professional aspect of it, we had been good pals.”
Wright reached out to Feige requesting the Marvel Studios president write something for the “Greatest Cinema Moment Ever” magazine issue. Wright assembled an all-star list of directors and actors to pen tributes to their best moviegoing experiences, including Steven Spielberg, Taika Waititi, and Patty Jenkins.
“I thought it would be disingenuous of me to get through this article without mentioning the ‘M’ word once,” Wright said, referring to Marvel. “So I did what I hadn’t done in six years – I just emailed Kevin. It was a really nice thing, and Kevin was really touched that I’d reached out to him directly and just said, ‘Hey’. Also it was funny after six years of no contact to email him just saying, ‘Kevin, I need you to write something for me, and I need it tomorrow!’ (laughs). So it was nice, we basically reconnected over this article and it was very sweet.”
Wright added, “I’m very glad I did it… he was really touched that I had reached out, and I feel what he wrote was great. I told him that I read what he’d said about ‘Aliens’ to James Cameron, which he said was just wild. So it was nice, it’s a nice happy ending to that story.”
Wright is coming off a successful Sundance, where he world-premiered his music documentary “The Sparks Brothers” to critical acclaim. Later this year, Focus Features will open Wright’s “Last Night in Soho” in theaters.
