Joe Cornish‘s Netflix series “Lockwood & Co.” premieres on the streamer today, the English comedian and filmmaker’s first foray into TV. And to celebrate, The Playlist interviewed Cornish for an upcoming episode of The Playlist Podcast. The talk spans many Cornish-related projects, like an “Attack The Block” sequel, Marvel‘s “Ant-Man,” and more.
And Cornish wasn’t shy about divulging all sorts of details on “Ant-Man,” a film he and fellow UK director Edgar Wright had in development for years before it hit theaters in 2015. Wright and Cornish left the film in 2014 but received writing and story credits for the finished product. Cornish’s story provides an intriguing look at the early days of Marvel Studios, the rise of the superhero film, and how much “Ant-Man” retained his and Wright’s original vision for the film. Overall, it’s a fascinating capsule of how dramatically Hollywood’s terrain has shifted since the late 2000s.
“When Edgar and I first met Marvel, they were in offices above a BMW showroom in Beverly Hills,” Cornish started. “It was around the time of Ang Lee’s “Hulk,” and [Jon] Favreau hadn’t even started working on the first “Iron Man.” Superhero movies were not a thing. They were not perceived as a cool thing to do. They were kind of a cruddy genre.” Cornish suggests that poorer-quality digital effects played a large part in the public perception of superhero films. “I guess because VFX hadn’t evolved to the point where they could put what was on page on the screen,” he continued, “So, they always felt like they were reaching for something they couldn’t achieve.
But all of that changed as Wright and Cornish worked on their “Ant-Man” treatment. “We worked on [“Ant-Man”] for something like eight years, on and off. And in that time, the landscape changed completely,” said Cornish. “The technology changed completely. Audiences fell in love with superhero movies. All the stuff that people loved in the ’50s, ’60s, ’70s, ’80s in comic books were suddenly translated on screen in a really direct way that had never happened before.”
But amid that evolution, Wright’s creative vision began to clash with the MCU’s ever-expanding franchise. “That kind of overtook us in the sense that Marvel didn’t necessarily want the authored movie that Edgar and I wanted to make because, at that point, they had this behemoth on their hands,” Cornish continued. “They had this universe where the movies had to integrate. Edgar is an auteur. Edgar Wright makes Edgar Wright movies. In the end, that’s why it didn’t happen, I guess.”
But there’s no hard feelings on Cornish’s part from him and Wright leaving “Ant-Man” over creative differences. “Having said that, a lot of our stuff is still in there, and I really like that movie,” Cornish said. “We’re as excited as anybody to see where it goes next. We feel connected to that cast as well because Edgar cast it. The designs are still in it. There are still a couple of little Edgar Wright ants scuttling around invisibly in those movies.”
And Cornish and Wright ended up okay after “Ant-Man” anyway. Cornish directed his second feature in 2019, “The Kid Who Would Be King,” while Wright had “Baby Driver” in 2018, “Last Night In Soho” in 2021, and made his documentary feature debut with “The Sparks Brothers.” But how will “Lockwood & Co.” fare with TV critics? Reviews start to trickle in this weekend, so let’s see if Cornish’s take on the popular YA series finds an audience on Netflix. And as for Ant-Man, he returns to theaters next month with “Ant-Man And The Wasp: Quantumania,” on February 17.
