In other Ant-Man news, Reed was recently interviewed by Screen Rant about the character’s future in the MCU outside of this debut pic. He explained that everyone who worked on Ant-Man has been talking with Captain America: Civil War directors Anthony and Joe Russo about how to make sure that Lang’s appearance in that packed tentpole is true to the nature of the character. When asked if conversations had been taking place, Reed said:
“Yeah, definitely. As we were doing the movie and we were in post and they were getting ready to head out to Atlanta to do Civil War, we had a lot of conversations. And I actually wanted those guys to come in and look at our stuff, because there’s gotta be a lot of sort of crossover. I found myself getting extremely protective over the character of Scott Lang and talking to the guys, the writers, the Russo’s about, “He wouldn’t do that.” It’s important because there’s this continuity that has to happen in this universe. It was really, really great because I’ve known those guys for a long time and it was really good to sort of bring them in, show them stuff, and see them get jazzed about stuff that they were doing. I liked that about the process… It’s a constant one-upmanship of how you present these characters. You know, you sort of… One of the things when we started working on this was I want to see all these different… things I love from the comics and then things we just imagined, like just scenarios to put him in and thing to see him do, and like let’s pack as much as we can into this movie. So by the time the Russo’s get it, it was like, “All right. You guys figure out what you are going to do with it.” That’s one of the fun things about it, is watching these characters grow and evolve.”
Of course, though Reed is passing over the characters from his film so that they can play a role in Civil War, that doesn’t mean that the director is necessarily washing his hands of them. Indeed, Reed bluntly stated, “If there’s an Ant-Man 2, I would love to come back for it.”
Producer Brad Winderbaum, also present during the interview, noted that he’d be happy to see Reed back, before the director elaborated:
“I sort of feel real ownership over these characters. Paul and I worked very closely in terms of what that character was and wasn’t. Rudd can do anything, by the way. You mostly know him from comedies. He’s also done amazing dramas and stage work. I think he can just do anything. I was sort of blown away not only by his work ethic, but he’s a co-screenwriter with McKay on the movie. And so he wasn’t just concerned with, “I gotta have more lines in this scene!” He really had the big picture of this thing and it was important to him to create this character that fits into the larger MCU, but it’s very specifically different than the other characters in MCU. So, yes. If we’re fortunate enough to do a sequel, I would love to come back.”
Ant-Man looks like a much lighter-hearted MCU entry than Age of Ultron, which should be a breath of fresh air for the franchise, and a large amount of that is likely due to Reed and Rudd, two individuals with strong comedy backgrounds who can still play well in a dramatic sandbox. It’s going to be fascinating to see what they’ve come up with when the movie opens July 17, and here’s hoping the finished product is strong enough to warrant a quick green-light for Ant-Man 2.