Ant-Man (film)

Ant-Man is a movie now in Early Production.

Production History
Wright and Cornish originally wrote a treatment for Artisan that focussed on Scott Lang as a burglar. Artisan, looking for a family-oriented movie, passed on the script. A few years later when Marvel executives Kevin Feige and Ari Arad asked if Wright was interested in writing a script on any of the Marvel titles, Wright offered the Ant-Man script.

In February 2007, Wright reported that the film was in a holding pattern while they worked on revising the script. At that time casting had not been started.

In March 2008, Wright told Empire magazine that a second draft of the script was being written. Known for being a comedic writer, the director noted that the film would not be overtly comedic, but that it would be "more of a full-on action adventure sci-fi film but with a comedic element," and that it would not be a spoof. He confirmed that the film portrays both Henry Pym, as the original 1960s character from "Tales to Astonish", and Scott Lang as his 1980s/1990s successor in the Ant-Man role.

Wright says the story is very character-driven, and a new twist on an origins story. As part of his writing he researched nanotechnology.

Of the Ant-Man character, Wright has said "Most shrinking films are about in somebody in jeopardy and this is something where the shrinker has the power. Rather than it being something that's a terrible thing to happen, it's actually making your character into the most bad ass sort of action hero/spy possible."

Kevin Fiege has said "I want to make 'Ant-Man' one of these days. I think that'll be surprising and a funny thing. I love that what Edgar (Wright) likes about it is that when he says he's doing Ant-Man people go, 'Ant-Man? What the hell is that?' I think that's fun."

On Stan Lee's Twiiter account he said: "To make up for my previous grievous error, here's a little item that may have escaped you. Marvel is prepping a movie starring-- Ant Man" "I had lunch with the cool, young director Edgar Wright (Shaun of the Dead) and, as you'd imagine, we had fun discussing the tiny hero"

Since finished wrapped "Scott Pilgrim vs. The World", Wright said "I can't do two things at once, so [now that Scott Pilgrim is finished] I will return to doing another draft of [Ant-Man]."

Wright has said this on his Twitter account: "I just met Joss Whedon for the first time. Speculation commence!"

Kevin Feige talk to Comingsoon.net that: "So I think towards the end of this year, early next year we'd start looking at early prep for that, but certainly for a release date after 'The Avengers."

Wright spoken with MTV that he's planing a second movie draft for Ant-Man: ""Once I finish ['Scott Pilgrim'] and collapse for at least a month, I'm going to get back into writing it," he said. "I wrote a draft before 'Scott Pilgrim' and my second draft is very much overdue to Marvel."" and ""It's something that I've written and they very much liked the first draft that we did, me and Joe Cornish, so we're excited to get back into it again.""

Wright spoken with Box Office.com about his Ant-Man plan: ""I haven't actually started the second draft yet--I'm not going to be able to until this film [SCOTT PILGRIM] is out--but what we wrote for the first draft, and what Marvel really liked, is that it's funny, but it's a genre film. It's about the level of comedy that IRON MAN has. The idea is to make a high-concept genre film where it's within another genre. His suit and its power is the big gadget and it takes place in the real world."" and ""I just wanted to do something that was slightly different than the superhero origin film. I felt that between that and the various mad scientist, crazy doctor films that we've all seen, this would be a way into an origin that was slightly different. I'm not really a multi-tasker--I haven't done anything since Marvel liked our first draft.""

Wright talked to Cinema Blend about Ant-Man being an origins story: ""I talked to Kevin Feige about that a while back where we just discussed about whether he would be in The Avengers. The thingis, the script that I’ve written, you know, whether it’s next or not I don’t know, the chronology of it or the way it works wouldn’t really fit in with what they do. And my film is very much an introduction to that character, and so it wasn’t something where it felt right to introduce him in that film. Maybe if I do the solo Ant-Man film and maybe there’s a later Avengers then they could draft him in later. But it didn’t work with the kind of the angle that we were going to do with the origin that I’d written.""

Wright with Scott Prilgram vs The World's Michael Cera talked to Ain't It Cool's Capone about Ant-Man not being an Avenger: Capone:""There was a part of me that thought that you might have secretly cast your Ant-Man already and that would have been part of the AVENGERS lineup, because I can’t imagine an AVENGERS without Henry Pym. He’s always been there"" Cera:""Ant-Man? He’s part of THE AVENGERS?"" Wright:""Yeah."" Cera:""Oh, I didn’t know that."" Capone: ""He was always…"" Wright:""He was in the original… Well the original issue of THE AVENGERS is like sort of, by Stan Lee’s own admission, was just like “How can we get all of the heroes into one comic?” They team up to capture the Hulk in the very first issue."" Cera:""Wow."" Wright:""But the thing is that the script that I had written for Marvel, if we end up doing it, is actually wouldn’t work with that timeline the way that I’ve written it. So I actually had a talk with [Marvel Studios] Kevin Feige a couple of months ago--I think before Joss [Whedon] got involved--about “Is Ant Man going to be a part of THE AVENGERS?” and we kind of both agreed that maybe he shouldn’t on this first one, because of the way that my origin script works. And I think also because they are going for more like the Ultimates kind of version of The Avengers, but I hope I get to do the script that we did for Ant-Man, because it’s pretty…"" Cera:""Is it funny?"" Wright:""Yeah. It’s a different kind of origin film. I kind of figured you had seen every different variation of mad scientist creating a formula and stuff, so this is something a bit different.''" Capone: ""Okay, well looking forward to it.""

Wright talked to Vanity Fair about making Ant-Man into a high tech secret agnet: ""I know there’s a big stigma attached to it, mostly because every movie about shrinking has been about people in peril. I think it’d be great to do a shrinking film about a bad-ass secret agent... Even something like The Incredible Shrinking Man, which is a fantastic film, is about a guy in trouble. But this is going to be nothing like that. It’s essentially a high-tech spy heist film with somebody with a very particular power.""

Wright again talked about Ant-Man begin Kick-Ass: ""I think it's an advantage that he's a character to maybe have a little more fun and lisence with. It's funny, I met Stan Lee in the States and he told me that Ant-Man was the one character that he came up with they never got right, himself included, that when he used to write him, they never quite nailed it even though it was the best idea." "I remember reading Marvel Premiere in 1979 of John Byrne's Ant-Man and I really like that. I think it's a great premise as you've never seen an incredible shrinking man fil where the person who can shrink is the hero. Usually it's someone in peril. It'll be fun to see someone who can kick ass that is only this big!""

Wright had again working on script for Ant-Man: ""This one's not about about the urgency of summer tentpoles and things going into production without a script ... It's slightly different than that""

Wright say that he's near finishing script for Ant-Man: ""We’re currently working on it, not right now. But the day after tomorrow we’ll go to Los Angeles and…[nods to Edgar],” Cornish said about the status of the film. “We kinda have a stock response now, it’s true to say we’ve been writing it in some form,” “Weirdly, the treatment for ‘Ant-Man’ exists before Marvel Studios. There was a treatment that Joe and I did when Artisan had the kind of lower-rung Marvel properties and we wrote a treatment for it that exists before ‘Hot Fuzz.’ Basically, when I met Kevin Feige I said, ‘Oh, did u ever get our ‘Ant-Man’ treatment?’ and he had never read it so we submitted it properly like four years later. So it’s something and me and Joe genuinely been working on for nearly a decade and at some point we’ll finish the script.""

Joe Cornish revealed that Wright has writen a second draft "Speaking this afternoon at Kapow, Joe Cornish has revealed that he and Edgar Wright delivered the “second draft” of Ant Man just two days ago. That’s one more hurdle jumped – or if I know Wright and Cornish, leapt.."

Wright revealed that the second draft for the film is finish "Joe and I turned in a draft on Monday… we’ve got some concept art… I love it and hope we get to make it soon."

Wright revealed to Josh Horowitz that they have already turned in a 3rd draft fo the script "We actually did hand in a draft on Monday. We didn't do a second draft of Ant-Man till Joe (Cornish) had finished the Attack the Block. So, since like February we've done two drafts of the script. We just handed in the third draft on Monday. So some concept stuff and we're really excited about it. In the time that we've, between the two of us been involved in Ant-Man we've made three movies but the fact that we keep returning to that project is because we're excited about it and think it will be really cool." "Is it too much to ask to finish a script before the release date?" "Well, that's the appeal of it to us in a way. The way that we wrote the script was for it to be like a stand alone genre film. This should be the same with any adaptation. You shouldn't have to have any prior knowledge of it. That's certainly the way to try and do something like that, to try and create an "in" for people so you don't have to know 50 years of Avengers history to enjoy the movie."

Cornish says something about the script with Multiple Ant-Men "As for whether or not the movie itself is moving forward remains up in the air. “I don’t know, man. I’d love for it to happen but it’s really up to Edgar and Marvel,” Cornish said. We had heard that at one point Cornish and Wright were going to put several of the Ant-Men (meaning people that had put on superhero scientist Hank Pym’s suit) into the script, meaning that they could have thrown in our personal favorite Ant-Man – Eric O’Grady, low-level S.H.I.E.L.D. Agent turned shadily “Irredeemable” Ant Man.

Cornish smiled at our implication and said, slyly, “No comment.” He then started to say something, “Well, you know…” before shutting himself off with another “No comment.”"

Cornish talked about the update status of the film "It’s good! You know, we’ve been working on that for a while now. We’ve delivered a draft earlier in the year and that’s really in the hands of Edgar and Marvel as to if and when they’ll make it. But we’re pretty excited about our draft.

He’s a pretty cool character. You know, he’s not a hugely famous Marvel character but in a way that’s kind of cool because people don’t have too many pre-conceptions or expectations. We feel that in quite a crowded market he is a very unique and very different kind of comic book hero. So it will be great if Ant Man got made at some point. We think we’ve written a pretty cool script."

- Joe Cornish

Kevin Feige Offers An Update on the film "It’s somewhere. I’ll just say it’s closer than it’s ever been in its long maybe eight year history, and I usually e-mail Edgar every two or three days and over those eight years its got further away and closer… we are now closer than we’ve ever been. So I hope it will come together shortly."

- Kevin Fiege

Cast

 * No confirmed cast