Hey, y’know that old saying about how the more writers a movie has, the better it gets? Hmm? What do you mean you’ve… oh. Oh, no. Say it ain’t so. Wait– what’s a production writer?
Latino Review has an Exclusivo Latino Reporto that Marvel’s Ant-Man has two new writers on board: Gabriel Ferrari and Andrew Barrer. They’ll be the production writers, the guys who’ll be on set to make sure the script is updated as needed during production. This is fairly common, and they may not even get screen credit. Weird, right? Screenwriting is a weird, weird business– one that I’m learning quite a lot about through John August and Craig Mazin’s Scriptnotes podcast. I’m currently taking the plunge into my own first big-boy-level screenplay, and the amount that I didn’t know five weeks ago was fucking flabbergasting. There’s the WGA, who gets credited, who writes what… it’s damn complicated. I’d be bitching about how Ant-Man is getting even more cooks in the kitchen and how that doesn’t bode well, but in the wacky world of screenwriting this isn’t huge news.
Still, this serves as a harsh reminder that this won’t feel like a singular vision, and it won’t be an Edgar Wright film (who has a fantastic habit of making films that feel singular and visionary). But this Peyton Reed-directed movie is happening. I’ve made peace with the fact that we’ve lost Wright’s film, and that the new Ant-Man will probably be just fine. I hope.