In just a matter of years, actress Evangeline Lilly went from a tv actress (Lost) to a movie star, with roles in the Oscar-winning film The Hurt Locker, Real Steel, and The Hobbit movies. It also wasn’t long before the actress found herself joining the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) as Hope Van Dyne a.k.a. The Wasp.
Since getting cast, Lilly has already starred in two Ant-Man movies and participated in the epic battle scene in Avengers: Endgame. And as fans await the third Ant-Man film, it’s almost hard to imagine that Lilly nearly walked away from her superhero role once.
Edgar Wright Was Behind Ant-Man Initially And He Had Cast Evangeline Lilly
Ant-Man had been a long ongoing project at Marvel. Wright had already prepared a script and he had refined it over the years. Finally, Marvel decided it would include Ant-Man in its slate of Phase 2 films. After it zeroed in on Paul Rudd for the lead role, Marvel started casting for the other characters. That’s when Lilly realized that she was on their radar.
“And so as I was finishing press for The Hobbit, that’s when I got the call from Marvel,” the actress recalled while speaking with The Hollywood Reporter. Eventually, Wright himself offered the role of Hope to Lilly and slowly but surely, she was convinced to join the MCU. “Initially, I was like, no way. No way,” Lilly told BuzzFeed. “And then they said, 'Paul Rudd's playing the lead.' And I was like, 'Oh s***. I love Paul Rudd. I really want to work with him!' So I was like, 'OK, well, send me the script. I'll read it and I'll consider it.'”
Lilly also noted that she was “pleasantly surprised” with the MCU movies so far. More importantly, she was impressed with Wright’s script. “I thought Edgar’s idea to blend the [Hank and Scott] stories was brilliant,” she said. “I was raised by two superheroes. I'm no schlump. I'm a pretty smart, competent, capable, kick-ass female. She's very cool.” Just like that, it seemed Lilly joining the MCU was a done deal. But then, Wright and Marvel suddenly had falling out. And when this happened, Lilly wasn’t sure if she was still in.
Here’s What Evangeline Lilly Said When Edgar Wright Left
It all started when Marvel decided to keep working on the Ant-Man script without Wright. For the screenwriter and director, this was simply a deal-breaker. “I was the writer-director on it and then they wanted to do a draft without me, and having written all my other movies, that’s a tough thing to move forward thinking if I do one of these movies I would like to be the writer-director,” Wright said while speaking with Variety. “Suddenly becoming a director for hire on it, you’re sort of less emotionally invested and you start to wonder why you’re there, really.” Meanwhile, Marvel boss Kevin Feige also told Empire Online, “It just became clear that both of us was just being too polite over the past eight years I guess!”
Wright ended up leaving just weeks before Ant-Man was scheduled to go into production. Lilly wasn’t thrilled to hear about Wright’s exit. “I thought, Well, if it's because Marvel are big bullies, and they just want a puppet and not someone with a vision, I'm not interested in being in this movie,” the actress explained. “Which is what I was afraid of.”
Coincidentally, Lilly also hadn’t signed on the dotted line yet when Marvel split from Wright. That meant she could still leave the MCU. “We were excited to work with Edgar. We were fans of Edgar. So, when the split happened, I was in the fortunate position where I had not signed my contract yet,” the actress revealed. “So, I had the choice to walk away, and I almost did.”
When Wright exited the movie, it was up to writer Adam McKay and Rudd (the actor told Collider that he worked on it with McKay “every day for six weeks”) to polish the script. Lilly essentially refused to sign her contract until she saw what they came up with. This happened at the very last minute. “I finally got the script literally the day before I was supposed to go in for fittings,” she recalled. “I said, 'I'm not going to do my fitting until I see the script.'” Lilly also met with new director Peyton Reed and then she revealed, “I signed on and I never looked back.”
Meanwhile, looking back at Wright’s script, Lilly is now convinced that it would never have worked because it had been “much more in the Edgar Wright camp of films.” (Wright had mentioned that Marvel wasn’t interested to “make an Edgar Wright movie.”) While she believes Wright’s script would have been a “riot to film,” it still wouldn’t have worked in the MCU. “It would have stuck out like a sore thumb, no matter how good it was,” Lilly remarked. “It just would have taken you away from this cohesive universe they're trying to create.”
At the moment, there is very little information available about the upcoming Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania. That said, Lilly had revealed that she has been working on physically conditioning herself to suit up again.
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