It has been reported on many film and entertainment sites, and confirmed by Marvel via a press release, that Marvel and Edgar Wright have parted ways on the film adaptation of the Marvel character Ant-Man. The press release can be found as follows:
Marvel and Edgar Wright jointly announced today that the studio and director have parted ways on ANT-MAN due to differences in their vision of the film. The decision to move on is amicable and does not impact the release date on July 17, 2015. A new director will be announced shortly.
Now that press release is very well put together and makes this split seem very friendly and amicable. The truth is actually not really like that. This split and everything leading up to it imply that Marvel and Wright had been in conflict for some time over which version of Ant-Man would be made, one that lined up with the studio's vision or one that was Wright's. Latino Review put together a story just one day after this news broke that details this struggle further and much better. That article can be found here.
The thing I kind of focus on here is this idea of the suits at Marvel and Disney, to be further known as the money men, and the creatives, Edgar Wright and his writing partner Joe Cornish, being at odds with one another. The former trying to push and force the latter to make changes to the script to Ant-Man, changes that went against Wright's and Cornish's vision for the film.
It is not a new problem in Hollywood and certainly not one that surprises anyone who works in the industry. The money men are always trying to push the creatives to do what they want. There is constantly notes being sent down from on high to the creative people writing the script or developing the film. It happens with every film. It perhaps happens less for writers and directors of some clout, but it still happens.
In most cases, these notes hurt a film and the story it is trying to tell. I mean you have people who are just not creative, from a story and artistic standpoint, making recommendations about what a film and story should have in it. Often times these recommendations are tied to concerns regarding the appeal of a film or the profitability of the film. They are recommendations that are not grounded in story concerns or creating a stronger theme or cohesive whole. No they are meant to make the film more profitable as a result of market surveys or other statistical data.
In the case of Ant-Man, the Latino Review piece states that Edgar Wright tried to work the executives notes into his screenplay of the film but was unable to do so without sacrificing his personal vision. Now the first question here is why did they wait until so close to the start of production to pass notes down on the screenplay? Keep in mind that Edgar Wright has been working, with Joe Cornish, on Ant-Man for over a year. Now it could be there was notes being passed down the chain this whole time, through all the many drafts of this film. If that is the case, I understand why Wright may have thrown his hands in the air and walked away from this all. He probably felt there was no way he could make any semblance of the film he wanted to make anymore.
It is such a shame if I am being honest. Wright is a considerable talent with a unique vision and a very sharp sense of wit and humor. He would have made a film in Ant-Man that was different in tone and execution from most of the Marvel films that came before it. I have read his approach for the action of the film, which focused on Ant-Man's ability to grow and shrink considerably, and it was unique and visually interesting. It is again a real shame we will never see what Wright's film, with his vision for it intact, would have been.
Almost two years ago I wrote a piece on this blog about this same subject, the money men at odds with the creatives. That piece can be found here. In it, I addressed the failure at the time of two very different films and how the press reported differently on the said failure of each. The piece focused on the struggle between the suits and the creatives, a struggle we see played out in this situation as well. The worry here is if Ant-Man can still be successful with Wright no longer involved.
The truth is we simply don't know how many of Wright's ideas and how much of his vision for Ant-Man will make its way into the final film. Perhaps a great deal of his ideas will. Given how close to the start of production they are (2 months) I think many of Wright's ideas and concepts will make it through. That is at least a silver lining of sorts on all of this.
But as a creative person myself and an aspiring writer I am dismayed at the idea that people with strong vision and great creative talent are being bent to the will of people who are not creative and who do not strive to make the best story possible, but rather the most profitable one. I have thought over the last several days how I would handle getting notes on a script I might be writing. I wonder if I could compromise what I want my work to be to someone else's idea of what it should become, especially when they stand opposed to what the essence of the story is. It would be hard for me to take those notes and work them into my story and make them seem a natural part of it.
I know as a novelist or a short story writer, both things I am aspiring to, that you do get notes back from an editor or from people who read early drafts of the work. But at the same, those notes are often optional and as a writer you can choose to continue to write the story as you see fit. In screenwriting, I am not as sure you can push through those outside influences and tell the story you want to. I actually feel more and more that the faults with many films lie in the interference of studio executives in the writing process and development stages. Too many cooks in the kitchen and all of that.
It all comes back to the simple truth that Hollywood is a business. Films are a product that are produced for the consumption of the general public, just like any other product. Also just like any other product, the corporations, in this case the studios, want to make as much profits on that product as possible. This is why there is situations like this and why you will see less and less unique films being released each year.
As a film lover, it saddens me anytime a director is unable to make the film he envisioned. It upsets me to see the potential of a film or story squandered due to too much interference. Often times you can see where things went wrong and can understand how easy, in many cases, it would have been to fix them. I know not every film can be truly great. But I think every film can be great for what it is.
I know this struggle between the money men and the creatives will rage on for some time into the future and I know it will cost many a film the chance to have become something great. But it is the reality of Hollywood. I hope that whoever comes in to direct Ant-Man can still make it a great film, while honoring Wright's vision. But there is a worry with this news that this great creative run at Marvel is coming to an end.
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