Adam McKay talks rewriting Ant-Man script with Paul Rudd

Last Updated on August 2, 2021

Adam McKay was hired to rewrite the script for ANT-MAN right around the same time director Peyton Reed joined the project, and in an interview with Collider, McKay talked a little about the changes he made to Edgar Wright and Joe Cornish's original script for the Marvel movie.

First, Adam McKay says star Paul Rudd contacted him after Edgar Wright exited ANT-MAN, and explains why he decided not to direct the film.

[Rudd] called me when Edgar Wright stepped away from the project and told me what was going on. I went and met with Marvel, and I was a little dubious just because I’m friends with Edgar and I didn’t know what the story was, and then when I kind of heard what happened, that Edgar had parted ways, and then I saw their materials, I was like, ‘God this is pretty cool’. Ultimately I didn’t want to jump in as a director, I had too many other projects going and it was too tight, but I thought, ‘You know what, I can rewrite this, and I can do a lot of good by rewriting it.’

McKay goes on to say he rewrote the ANT-MAN script with Rudd, and says he was surprised how good the actor is at writing dialogue.

I’ve always known Paul Rudd’s a really good writer from improvising with him on set, but I had no idea he was that good—he’s really great with dialogue.  So the two of us holed up in hotel rooms on the east and west coast, and I think it was like six to eight weeks we just ground it out and did a giant rewrite of the script.  I was really proud of what we did, I really thought we put some amazing stuff in there and built on an already strong script from Edgar Wright and sort of just enhanced some stuff.

Adam McKay says new action beats were added to the ANT-MAN script, and he and Paul Rudd tried to streamline the story, while also expanding the scope of the film.

We added some new action beats. I grew up on Marvel Comics so the geek in me was in heaven that I got to add a giant action sequence to the movie; I was so excited. So we did, we added some cool new action. There’s a lot that’s already in there from what Edgar did, there’s a lot of dialogue and character still in there…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—we just basically did a rewrite. Edgar had a really good script. But we just had a blast, and Rudd was just so much fun to write with. I walked away saying, ‘Hey, you and I gotta write a script together.'

Am I still bummed Edgar Wright left ANT-MAN? Of course, but what's done is done, and I'm excited to check out the first trailer for the upcoming Marvel film. It sounds like Adam McKay had a blast while writing the ANT-MAN script with Paul Rudd, and I can't wait to see the results from their collaboration.

ANT-MAN is scheduled to hit theaters on July 17, 2015.