With each new story we hear about Marvel’s Phase Three segment of films, I become more convinced that by the time we reach that point the studio will feel emboldened about trying virtually anything it wants because the core audience will show up no matter what. A Doctor Strange movie, by definition, needs to be surreal. The Planet Hulk rumors are gonzo. And now Edgar Wright’s telling us that his Ant-Man movie probably won’t be a traditional superhero movie.
What?
The Shaun of the Dead director spoke with IGN about his pub comedy The World’s End, but also opened up about Ant-Man, which is expected to lead off Marvel’s Phase Three after the studio has delivered on The Avengers 2 in 2015. Wright says his film will differ from other superhero movies in specific ways.
"It’s a way of doing a superhero film within another genre. I wanted to tell an origin tale in a slightly different way. It’s part of the Marvel cinematic universe, but it also feels like its own piece."
Could Wright be talking about a much earlier report that suggested Ant-Man could be told as a high-tech spy thriller? That’s what the director told Vanity Fair a few years back, that his film would involve a heist conducted by a guy with specific, unique powers. Now, a lot could have changed between then and now, and the only real insight we have into Ant-Man comes from the unfinished footage that Wright brought to last year’s Comic-Con. Of course, that reel did show our hero trying to get past two guards who were protecting a door. Maybe there’s more to this heist theory than we’d imagined?
Either way, hopefully we're going to see Ant-Man in a different Marvel movie, maybe The Avengers 2, leading up to his "origin" movie in theaters in November 2015.
