Adam McKay and Paul Rudd's 'Ant-Man' Rewrite Is 'Bigger' and 'More Aggressive'

Yahoo Movies
Updated

Paul Rudd in ‘Ant-Man’ 

Now that the Guardians of the Galaxy have gone from comic book zeroes to box office heroes, the pressure is on for Marvel to work similar magic on the pint-sized adventurer Ant-Man, whose maiden outing has long seemed in danger of getting squashed. Original director Edgar Wright bid Ant-Man a tender “Fare thee well” in May, leaving the film just as production was about to commence. Eventually, Bring It On's Peyton Reed stepped into the director's chair, overseeing a cast that had grown to include Michael Douglas and Paul Rudd as the old and new Ant-Man respectively and Evangeline Lily as a character who may or may not be the Wasp.

In addition to starring in Ant-Man, it turns out that Rudd also played a key role in keeping the movie on track after Wright’s departure. In a new interview, Rudd’s Anchorman collaborator Adam McKay revealed how he and Rudd huddled for an intense, six-to-eight week rewrite on the script. "The two of us holed up in hotel rooms on the east and west coast [and] just ground it out," McKay told Collider. ”I really thought we put some amazing stuff in there and built on an already strong script from Edgar Wright.” In fact, early on, McKay was considered as a potential behind-the-camera replacement for Wright, but the self-confessed Marvel Comics geek opted to stick with just the screenplay. “We added some cool new action. We just shaped the whole thing, we just tried to streamline it, make it cleaner, make it a little bigger, a little more aggressive, make it funnier in places.”

Anchorman 2
Anchorman 2

Adam McKay (left) on the set of ‘Anchorman’ in 2003

Considering how much of Guardians of the Galaxy's success was owed to James Gunn's irreverent sense of humor, Marvel is no doubt banking on the idea that the Anchorman guys will improve Ant-Man's comic prowess. For his part, McKay emerged from those hotel rooms not only excited about indulging his inner comic book geek, but also eager to team up with Rudd again for another screenwriting adventure. “He was just so much fun to write with. I walked away saying, 'Hey, you and I gotta write a script together.'” In classic comic book universe-colliding fashion, how about making it Ant-Man Meets Anchorman?