Wright’s Ant-Man ‘not really an out-and-out comedy’

Edgar Wright, director of Scott Pilgrim vs. the World and Shaun of the Dead, says that while his adaptation of Marvel’s Ant-Man will contain humor, it won’t be a spoof.

“It’s not really an out-and-out comedy,” Wright tells PiQ magazine. “I think some people assume that it must be a spoof, but it’s not really. I guess it’s as funny as something like Iron Man is, it’s on that level of entertainment, really. It’s a big, high concept, special effects comic book adaptation, and very character-led and we found a way of… I guess in a similar way to Iron Man, the thing that worked with that and hopefully will with this is that it’s a different way of seeing a superhero origin, because you’ve seen so many of them and we really tried to figure out a fresh take on that story. So it’s definitely a Marvel film but it’s got a little twist on it in terms of the way that it plays out.”

Although IMDB lists Ant-Man‘s release date as 2010, it’s not on Marvel’s official slate for that year; Thor and an Iron Man sequel are. However, if Jon Favreau’s recent comments are accurate, Ant-Man could show up in the planned Avengers feature in 2011.

Wall-E will win the weekend, but Wanted should hold its own

Disney-Pixar’s Wall-E undoubtedly will dominate the weekend box office, but Variety reports that Wanted is tracking well, and could debut as high as $40 million.

It also could eat into the audience for The Incredible Hulk, which had a domestic gross of $104.2 million as of Wednesday.

Reviews for Wanted, loosely based on the miniseries by Mark Millar and J.G. Jones, have been mostly positive — 73 percent on Rotten Tomatoes’ Tomatometer — praising director Timur Bekmambetov’s visuals over the actual script.

(The poster above, found at IMP Awards, is a new one from the U.K. I like it much better than those released in the United States.)

The Ticker

• A green-screen cut of The Spirit is finished, and awaits 1,800 visual-effects shots from the San Francisco-based studio The Orphanage. The movie opens on Christmas. [Bags and Boards]

• A new featurette for the Batman: Gotham Knight animated anthology focuses on the villains of Gotham City. [MTV Movies Blog]

• Dozens of midnight July 17 screenings of Batman: The Dark Knight already have sold out, some theaters are adding showings at 3 a.m. July 18 to meet demand. [Slashfilm]

• Christian Bale enjoys playing Bruce Wayne/Batman so much that he’s already looking toward a third movie: “What Batman is all about is a double-sided edge; there’s a duality to this character, which makes him still interesting to play in the sequel—I hope in a third. And I’m working with people who are going to inspire but also demand that I come up with something new. I do love the unknown, but there’s more to investigate in Bruce Wayne and Batman.” [Parade]

• I like fantasy casting calls, like this one for the big-screen adaptation of Marvel’s Runaways, but I’m really bad at matching actors with fictional characters. Chace Crawford as Chase Stein is spot-on, and Nikki Blonksy as Gertrude Yorkes is pretty good. I’m not sure about the others, though. [MTV Movies Blog]

This entry was posted on Friday, June 27th, 2008 at 9:09 am and is filed under Animation, Comic Books, DC Comics, Marvel, Movies. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.