On Friday afternoon, hoping nobody would notice just before the weekend, Marvel announced that director Edgar Wright had consciously uncoupled from the Ant-Man movie that he had spent several years developing. While the reasons behind Wright leaving the project are still a little vague, the semi-sketchy Latino Review claims that he wasn’t fired, but rather that he chose to quit after Marvel commissioned a new draft of the script that “homogenized” the film. Wright was supposedly upset by some higher-ups at Marvel suddenly losing faith in him, so he decided to walk rather than continue to fight them.
Though neither party involved has said much about the split since Friday, Avengers director Joss Whedon tweeted a photo of himself holding a British ice cream treat called a Cornetto with his head bowed, a pretty obvious tribute to Wright and his “Three Flavors Cornetto Trilogy.” Wright himself later responded similarly, tweeting a now-deleted photo of a somber Buster Keaton holding a Cornetto, along with the word “selfie.” As Vulture points out, Keaton actually gave up his film-making independence and signed an ill-fated deal to make movies for MGM—a decision he later referred to as “the worst of his life”—which is weirdly relevant to this situation if you really think about it.
Guardians Of The Galaxy director James Gunn also weighed in with a brief message on his Facebook page, but his sweet-though-confusing post—in which he compares Wright and Marvel to an unhappy romantic couple—reads a bit like someone trying to play nice with both sides. Guardians Of The Galaxy could get a sequel, after all. Or maybe he just didn’t have any British ice cream handy.
— Joss Whedon (@josswhedon) May 24, 2014