Kevin Feige is the Captain of the good ship Marvel, steering a fleet of superheroes through sometimes choppy seas. But when he came into town this week to present some footage from** Guardians Of The Galaxy**, we cornered him for a podcast and asked about a couple of the studio's future films. Most importantly, we asked him about Edgar Wright's departure from Ant-Man, as well as what we can expect from Scott Derrickson's Doctor Strange.
First of all, what happened on Ant-Man?
"We’ve been with Edgar for eight years. The disappointing thing for me is not being able to make a movie with him, right now; it’s just the personal relationship. It was amicable and we sat in a room together and said this isn’t working. I just wish I or he had figured that out somewhere in the eight years leading up to it.
"Well, it’s not worth, right now, going into [what the disagreements were] in super-specifics. I wish it wasn’t as late in the day as it was, but it just had become clear that there was an impasse that we had never reached before. We’ve worked with lots of unbelievable talented filmmakers like Edgar before, and of course there are disagreements along the way. We had always found a way around it, a way to battle through it and emerge on the other side with a better product. It just became clear that both of us was just being too polite over the past eight years I guess! Then it was clear that, ‘Oh you’re really not gonna stop talking about that note?’ ‘Oh, you’re really not gonna do that note?’ Alright this isn’t working.
"We’re very thick-skinned and we’re use to the second-guessing and the colour commentary during the process. We’ve done what we’ve always done, which is block it out and make the best movie possible because it always comes down to the end product. Clearly we believe that we’re on the road now with Peyton Reed to the best version of Ant-Man that could have existed."
On the less fraught subject of Doctor Strange, Feige addressed the question of whether hiring a horror director means that this will be a scary film.
"I would say you can certainly look at the past work of the filmmakers we hire as a bit of an indication for the tone of the movie, but not necessary everything. The Russos, who are well known for their sitcoms, there is nothing sitcom about The Winter Soldier! No, I wouldn’t say just because he has only done horror movies means that Doctor Strange is going to be a horror movie. It means he is a talented filmmaker who we think could add something unique and very fresh to the particular franchise. But there could be scary moments. There are scary moments in all our movies! There are some scary people that Strange has to deal with, I will say."
For much more from Feige, you can read the full transcript here or listen to the Empire podcast below - and why not subscribe while you're at it?
Ant-Man hits our screens on July 17, 2015; Doctor Strange is due in July 2016, and Guardians Of The Galaxy is headed our way on July 31 (August 1 in the US).
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