‘Ant-Man’ has been a project that Edgar Wright and Joe Cornish have been working on for years at this point. Back in the mid-2000s, it was on the slate with ‘Iron Man’ and ‘The Incredible Hulk’, but focus shifted towards building up to ‘The Avengers’, so ‘Ant-Man’ was sidelined. Then Wright and Cornish, who co-wrote the script for the pint-sized protector, got occupied with other projects. However, while they kept working on other things, they primped and polished their Marvel superhero script. Now, while ‘Ant-Man’ isn’t exactly going into production just yet, it is now closer than it ever has been to that point.
According to The Hollywood Reporter, Wright took a week out of his busy schedule earlier this month to quietly direct a test reel for ‘Ant-Man’ for the purpose of experimenting with “the potential look and tone of his movie, as well as to decide how convincing Ant-Man’s powers look onscreen”. Test reels aren’t unusual when it comes to “stylized or risky” takes on movies. As the article points out, Zack Snyder made one for ‘300’, Jonathan Liebesman made one for ‘Battle: Los Angeles’, and Guillermo Del Toro made one for ‘At the Mountains of Madness’. This could explain why London comic book stores have recently been cleaned out of their Ant-Man comics. Wright probably sent his minions out to get some inspiration from the source material for his reel.
As much as many fans (including myself) would love to see ‘Ant-Man’ sooner rather than later, Wright’s next film is ‘The World’s End’, the final serving in the Blood and Ice Cream Trilogy featuring Nick Frost and Simon Pegg. He’s also attached to direct ‘The Night Stalker’ with Johnny Depp producing for Disney, but since that wasn’t even in the scripting phase when we last heard about it, I’m guessing that since ‘Ant-Man’ is further along in pre-production, we’ll be seeing Hank Pym enter the Marvel Cinematic Universe some point soon. Who knows? Maybe he’ll make an appearance at Comic-Con next month to take the unannounced 2014 slot in Marvel’s lineup away from Black Panther and the Guardians of the Galaxy.
