Joss Whedon Says Edgar Wright's 'Ant-Man' Was 'Best Script Marvel Ever Had'

When director Edgar Wright left his longtime passion project Ant-Man over “creative differences” with Marvel, no one was more shocked than Joss Whedon. In a lengthy new Buzzfeed profile of Whedon, the Avengers: Age of Ultron director says that he still has no idea what happened between Wright and Marvel — but that Wright’s Ant-Man screenplay was one of the best he’d ever seen.

“I thought the script was not only the best script that Marvel had ever had, but the most Marvel script I’d read,” Whedon tells Buzzfeed. “I had no interest in Ant-Man. [Then] I read the script, and was like, Of course! This is so good! It reminded me of the books when I read them. Irreverent and funny and could make what was small large, and vice versa.”

“I don’t know where things went wrong,” he continues. “But I was very sad. Because I thought, This is a no-brainer. This is Marvel getting it exactly right. Whatever dissonance that came, whatever it was, I don’t understand why it was bigger than a marriage that seemed so right. But I’m not going to say it was definitely all Marvel, or Edgar’s gone mad! I felt like they would complement each other by the ways that they were different. And, uh, somethin’ happened.”

British filmmaker Wright, known for his “Cornetto trilogy” of Shaun of the Dead, Hot Fuzz, and The World’s End, began developing Ant-Man in 2006. Last May, Wright exited the project after eight years, with an official joint statement from Wright and Marvel citing “differences in their visions of the film.” Production resumed under new director Peyton Reed. Whedon is speaking more freely now that he’s stepping back from the Marvel universe, but last year, he gave a more understated show of solidarity for Wright: Tweeting out a picture of himself holding a Cornetto ice cream wrapper (below). Ant-Man is set to open on July 16.