To many who aren’t familiar with Marvel comics, the concept of a superhero named Ant-Man would probably sound like a goof. There’s probably also people that would confuse him with Atom Ant, the Hanna-Barbera cartoon. But Ant-Man is going to be part of the next phase of Marvel movies, and it’s going to be directed by Edgar Wright for a 2015 release.
Now Variety tells us that the casting is down to two actors: Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Paul Rudd. We could definitely imagine both being shrunken down to tiny proportions, and Variety says there could be a third actor in the running, but Levitt and Rudd are the top two. (Levitt currently has a lot of heat from co-starring in The Dark Knight Rises, as well as from his directing debut, Don Jon.)
We can also see both actors leading a superhero film, as well as play the regular day alter ego of Ant-Man, the scientist Henry Pym. It’s not hard to imagine Rudd in a white lab coat and nerdy glasses, just waiting to transform into a superhero, albeit a very small one.
Ant-Man has a release date of July 31, 2015, which means it will come hot on the heels of the next Avengers movie, which currently has a release date of May 1, 2015. Again, 2015’s shaping up to be a big genre year, and we’d love to see what Edgar Wright can do with a Marvel franchise, especially one that’s not as well known as Iron Man or Spider-Man.