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Report: Disney seizing more control over Marvel Studios. Scrapping/re-writing script

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anaron

Member
It was a good run.

Yesterday Edgar Wright left Ant-Man when Marvel took him and Joe Cornish off the script and handed it to Eric Pearson, who had written the Marvel One Shots. Latino Review has the story here, and it's an ugly one of Marvel backing off their filmmaker at the last moment. The new script is apparently a disaster, and rumor has it that the problem is coming from higher up than Kevin Feige - Disney execs are sticking their fingers into the Marvel pie, I'm hearing.

This morning Latino Review got a new Marvel scoop - Drew Goddard is leaving the Netflix Daredevil show, they say. No reason is given yet.

On Twitter Joss Whedon, the big creative name behind Marvel these days, posted this:

pic.twitter.com/2vpeRIZNWH
— Joss Whedon (@josswhedon) May 24, 2014

a clear display of solidarity with Edgar Wright, who wasn't fired from Ant-Man but forced off the project when given a shitty script just weeks before shooting. Whedon, by the way, has said that The Avengers: Age of Ultron is the finale of his time with Marvel.

This follows on the heels of Marvel taking Thor: The Dark World away from Alan Taylor in post and having another director come on and shoot additional material. Marvel's always been autocratic - this is the house that Feige built, and he's been leading it with an iron fist - but things have been getting uglier over there for some time, especially now that Disney is getting involved. Why would the studio fuck with the division that's making money and having a huge cultural impact right when they're at their best? Because of dumb egos. Hollywood is dumb, run by dumb, venal people, and the executives who aren't creative resent the people who are, and want to get their stink on the movies. And you have to understand that Disney doesn't care about the movies - they want the Marvel IP so they can sell diapers and shirts and bedsheets. The movies are just commercials for the IP.

It's only going to get worse. Disney's notes on Ant-Man made the movie homogenized and flat. They're not going to stop there. How long will Marvel resist before they just give up? Kevin Feige's contract is up in 2018 - I would be surprised if he re-ups. I'm betting on the press tour for Avengers 3 being his big victory lap as he says it's time for someone else to lead Marvel into the next phase.

As for what's up with Ant-Man... does Marvel even want to make this movie? Everything I've heard about this new script indicates they really aren't behind the concept. And what's the point of making Ant-Man without Edgar Wright anyway? Could they simply scrap the whole project? What if they killed Ant-Man, abandoned that release date and announced Captain/Ms. Marvel for November 2015? They have the script. I think they have the role cast. They know that there's a lot of impact to be had with the first female-led superhero movie of this particular cycle.

LIke I said, it was a good run. There will be more good Marvel movies, but you can see the expiration date now.

http://badassdigest.com/2014/05/24/is-this-the-end-of-the-marvel-movie-age/

Definitely a little too reactionary but Faraci knows his insider info. This ain't good.
 

Cheebo

Banned
I feel this deserves its own focus outside the big news about Daredevil losing its show runner as well as Wright on Ant-Man. This seems to be an on-going new norm over at Marvel outside of just these two films. It looks like it even impacted Thor.

Things look like the are falling apart fast due to the newly heavy Disney oversight.

http://badassdigest.com/2014/05/24/is-this-the-end-of-the-marvel-movie-age/
Yesterday Edgar Wright left Ant-Man when Marvel took him and Joe Cornish off the script and handed it to Eric Pearson, who had written the Marvel One Shots. Latino Review has the story here, and it's an ugly one of Marvel backing off their filmmaker at the last moment. The new script is apparently a disaster, and rumor has it that the problem is coming from higher up than Kevin Feige - Disney execs are sticking their fingers into the Marvel pie, I'm hearing.

This follows on the heels of Marvel taking Thor: The Dark World away from Alan Taylor in post and having another director come on and shoot additional material.

It's only going to get worse. Disney's notes on Ant-Man made the movie homogenized and flat.


http://www.latino-review.com/news/e...orce-between-marvel-edgar-wright-over-ant-man

About 3 months ago, Marvel had notes. The meat of the notes were about the core morality of the piece, must include franchise characters. etc., These notes came from the big four at Marvel. Joe Cornish and Edgar Wright did two drafts to try and answer the notes without compromising their vision.

6 weeks ago Marvel took the script off them and gave the writing assignment to two very low credit writers. One of the writers were from Marvel's in house writing team. Edgar stayed cool, agreed to stay on the project, and read the draft.

The script came in this week and was completely undone. Poorer, homogenized, and not Edgar's vision. Edgar met with Marvel on Friday to formally exit and the announcement went out directly after.

Edgar & Joe were upset by the sudden, out of nowhere lack of faith in them as filmmakers. Fiege had always batted for them but this felt like it came from the higher ups.
 
Any premise based on a Latino Review "scoop" is inherently flawed. Of course, coming from Devin Faraci, this shouldn't be surprising.
 

Mariolee

Member
Disney starting to get cocky with the Marvel money. Should be interesting to see how everything unfolds over the next few years.
 

Dysun

Member
Meddling in ant man is shitty, if true. Source is Latino review which is wrong about 99% of things so I'm hesitant to believe it even if it seems plausible
 
I'm not gonna pretend I saw any of this coming, and it's sad as hell.

Meddling in ant man is shitty, if true. Source is Latino review which is wrong about 99% of things so I'm hesitant to believe it even if it seems plausible

Really, I thought LR was one of the better sources for this kind of stuff
 

Cheebo

Banned
Meddling in ant man is shitty, if true. Source is Latino review which is wrong about 99% of things so I'm hesitant to believe it even if it seems plausible

Latino Review has been pretty dead on when it comes to Marvel Studios reporting. Not to mention the one-two punch of Wright & Goddard mere days after each other.
 

dabig2

Member
What if they killed Ant-Man, abandoned that release date and announced Captain/Ms. Marvel for November 2015? They have the script. I think they have the role cast. They know that there's a lot of impact to be had with the first female-led superhero movie of this particular cycle.

Wut?
 

Mariolee

Member
Why would Disney waste time doing this? Marvel seems to pretty much know exactly what they are doing on their own. Why bother a good thing?

When there's a lot of money coming from a lot of different people hanging in the balance, you can bet their bottom dollar they're going to want to make it look like what they want.

Why are we now trusting Latino-Review? Don't they have a pretty well deserved reputation for inaccuracy as of late?

Not for Marvel.
 

Slayven

Member
I am going to wait for a an article that doesn't use a twitter pic as evidence, and the other is the Latino Review.
 

Blader

Member
Latino Review has been pretty dead on when it comes to Marvel Studios reporting. Not to mention the one-two punch of Wright & Goddard mere days after each other.

--Planet Hulk
--World War Hulk
--Black Panther in 2014

They've gotten more wrong than right.
 

mreddie

Member
a58.jpg
 

Cheebo

Banned
Why would Disney waste time doing this? Marvel seems to pretty much know exactly what they are doing on their own. Why bother a good thing?

As Devin Faraci said, egos. Especially hollywood egos.

Why are we now trusting Latino-Review? Don't they have a pretty well deserved reputation for inaccuracy as of late?

Not at all when it comes to Marvel Studios. They have been the main source of leaks from over there. Faraci also has a pretty solid inside track on what is going on at Marvel.
 
I don't believe it.

Disney has owned Marvel for years. Anybody who believes Disney hasn't had creative involvement before now doesn't know how the company operates.
 

Caboose

Member
Faraci is a bit of a tampon, but he does often have a lot of insider info. I'm inclined to believe what he's saying (sensationalist title not withstanding)
 

Cheebo

Banned
--Planet Hulk
--World War Hulk
--Black Panther in 2014

They've gotten more wrong than right.

None of that was recent. Their recent track record for the past year has been dead on. As has Faraci when it comes to Marvel.

Not to mention the leaving of visionary types like Wright and Goddard is pretty damning and impossible to ignore.

I don't believe it.

Disney has owned Marvel for years. Anybody who believes Disney hasn't had creative involvement before now doesn't know how the company operates.

How do you explain what happened with Ant-Man and Daredevil?
 
Anybody who believes Disney hasn't had creative involvement before now doesn't know how the company operates.

Who said they didn't? The article, the op, the title, is all about an *increase* in that creative control. Obviously they have been involved in that part of the process since they bought Marvel, but at a level that was less disruptive.
 
How idiotic can you be to change somethings that is immensely profitable on its own.

Total speculation, but Disney probably doesn't want any tonal drift in its Marvel franchisees. So if Wright's Ant Man was more an offbeat slapstick comedy heist film than a gritty action movie, it might not fit into the MCU big picture. That homogeny would make the Avengers movies stronger, but ensure the individual franchises can't ever be that interesting in their adaptations.
 

Cheebo

Banned
Who said they didn't? The article, the op, the title, is all about an *increase* in that creative control.

Not to mention most of prep work on Phase 1 and part of phase 2 was in place when Disney acquired Marvel. It makes sense their presence would start to be noticed lately.
 
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