Patrick Wilson, Kevin Weisman, and Matt Gerald have decided to bow out of Ant-Man.
According to various published reports, Patrick Wilson, Kevin Weisman, and Matt Gerald are no longer attached to Ant-Man, with Wilson leaving because of a schedule conflict and Weisman and Gerard leaving because they were written out of the script.
Gerald is a character actor and Weisman is a familiar face from his years on Alias, but one assumes that they wouldn’t have had large roles, especially if they were easily written out.
Wilson, on the other hand, was likely the third or fourth lead on the picture, a genre fixture (The Conjuring, Watchmen, and the glorious looking Space Station 76), but with that all said, it’s not a name that is going to cause people to throw their arms up in the air and say, “That’s it Marvel! I’m done, no P-Wil, no seat fill!” It’s just an unfortunate wrinkle for a film that really doesn’t need any more of them.
As for whether Marvel can find someone to fill Wilson’s role in time for tomorrow’s presentation (again, assuming that Ant-Man will be a big part of the presentation, even), that seems unlikely, but do remember that now is the moment where this news broke to the public, not the moment when Marvel knew that this change might be happening. Besides, Marvel has to be getting pretty good at putting out fires with Ant-Man.
On Wednesday, Marvel released a bit of glorious concept art for Ant-Man and, for a moment, it felt alright to get really excited about this film for the first time since the crushing loss of Edgar Wright and his innate ability to make the Marvel base swoon.
No use crying over spilt eight years of assurances about the property, though. It’s Comic Con and we have art and there was speculation that Marvel might use the Con to trot out Paul Rudd, Michael Douglas, Corey Stoll, new director Peyton Reed, and maybe even Evangeline Lilly (assuming that they could finally lock her into a deal after months of rumors about her participation). But while it’s still feasible that we could get a splashy Ant-Man section during the Marvel panel, things are not looking good.
Happy SDCC 2014! Keep it locked here for all of your SDCC information!
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