Edgar Wright has left "Ant-Man" as director

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In a surprise announcement, Edgar Wright has left Marvel Studios’ “Ant-Man” as its director, the company said Friday.

Marvel already has tapped a new director, but has yet to reveal who landed the job.

Hollywood and Marvel’s fan community will be scratching its head for awhile over this one, considering Wright has been attached to “Ant-Man” since 2006 — before the first “Iron Man” film — as a screenwriter. He has regularly gone to San Diego Comic-Con to give updates on the project’s development, and even showed test footage in 2012 of his approach to bringing the size-shifting character to the big screen.

Marvel and Wright parted ways “due to differences in their vision of the film,” the company and director said in a statement.

The decision to move on is amicable, they added, and does not impact the release date on July 17, 2015. The film had originally been dated for Nov. 6, 2015.

Paul Rudd, Michael Douglas and Evangeline Lilly star in the film, with Corey Stoll, Michael Pena and Patrick Wilson.

In addition to helming, Wright also co-wrote the script with Joe Cornish (“Attack the Block”).

Marvel is developing “Ant-Man” as a potential new franchise as part of its third phase of films, the way it hopes to introduce the characters in “Guardians of the Galaxy” in August to hopefully appear in multiple movies.

In the comicbooks, Ant-Man is the alter-ego of biochemist Hank Pym, who uses subatomic particles to create a size-altering formula and when tests go awry, realizes he can also communicate with and control insects. The character eventually pairs up with the Avengers.

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