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Edgar Wright's exit from Marvel Studios' first Ant-Man film is a 2010s pop culture moment that continues to live on in the minds of nerds everywhere.

Previously, he had been signed on as the writer-director of the movie, and there was a considerable amount of hype built around what his take on the character would look like. After all, the people do love their Scott Pilgrim vs. the World and Shaun of the Dead. (And their Hot Fuzz, and their The World's End, as well; oh, and Spaced.) However, Wright left the production in May 2014 after an impressive eight years of work on the feature, and Peyton Reed was brought on as director. Wright's exit from the film was seen by many fans as evidence that the MCU wasn't a place where unique directorial voices like Wright were going to be nurtured. 

Now, on Joshua Horowitz's Happy Sad Confused podcast, Edgar Wright addressed his departure from the Ant-Man film, as well as the conversation around it.

"The reason why I wanted to do [Ant-Man] in the first place was because I was inspired by the people who had got to do the first of something, and kind of set the pace," he said. "When [Tim Burton's Batman] came out, it was both the biggest movie of the year by far, and also so idiosyncratic and specific to Tim Burton... Without going into the weeds and without breaking my NDA, the sort of the reason I had to walk away from Ant-Man is because by the time I had started doing it, which was kind of eight years after I had started writing it, now, there was a formula. And not just in terms of continuity within the movies, not just the movies themselves and the stories, but also like a house style and a look and a way of shooting things. And sort of all the things that are less interesting to me where, on these movies there's a lot of second unit stuff, there's like a VFX unit, so I knew I couldn't make that movie in the same way that I had made Scott Pilgrim vs. the World," said Wright.

Tim Burton's 1989 Batman movie, as Wright points out, is beloved because it feels like a Tim Burton movie just as much as it feels like a Batman movie. Wright eventually figured out that he was not going to achieve something similar for himself with the MCU's first Ant-Man movie, leading to him leaving the project altogether, although he was still credited as one of the writers with parts of his work remaining in the finished product. 2015's finished Ant-Man movie ended up feeling vaguely Wrightian, but obviously, without Wright behind the camera, it wasn't the same as the real thing. 

Wright's current movie, The Running Man, is in theaters now. Ant-Man is streaming on Disney+.

Consider this a meta post-credits scene for Marvel fans - the four key articles you need to read next to continue the thrills:

• How to watch the Marvel Cinematic Universe in release or chronological order
• The best Marvel Comics stories of all time
• All the MCU movies ranked from best to worst
• Our weekly Marvel insider's column, Marvel Matters