Ant-Man: Info, Pics, Rumors, Casting and Details till release

A friend of mine told me that there is a formula for the appropriateness of dating a younger woman.

He said "Cut your age in half and add seven years. If her age falls within that range, then you're good."

I'm 46. Cut in half to 23, add 7, and we come in just under the wire.

 

It's been announced that Michael Douglas is playing Hank Pym and Paul Rudd is playing Scott Lang.

 

Until they edited it, the Variety article on the subject also said that Pym was the bad guy...

 

Here's the announcement from Marvel:

http://marvel.com/news/movies/2014/1/13/21746/michael_douglas_to_star_as_hank_pym_in_marvels_ant-man …

 

Interesting casting. It sounds like they are adhering to some version of the story template that Wright discussed years and years ago.

Also, Scott Lang being in it probably means we get Cassie, which is a big plus for me.

 

Pym is the bad guy.

Wife beating sometimes Skrull.

 

Edgar Wright, Paul Rudd, Rashida Jones and now Michael Douglas?

JUST TAKE MY MONEY ALREADY!!!!

 

Perhaps this has been mentioned, but there's a Danish film coming out called Ant-boy. The trailer can be seen here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qORKPg5JRas

It looks charming.

 

Well this is a surprise. Talk about a magic trick. Everyone is all curious about Rudd, that happens then talk kinda cools and meanwhile they are dealing in an uber quiet manner to land yet again one of the top 25 actors of the past 30yrs as a lead for this film.

Michael Douglas as Hank Pym came out of nowhere which leaves me wondering what else is up their sleeves? At face value it doesn't rule out Janet. A 50+ man with a younger woman, one in her 30's, wouldn't be bizarre. Lang's involvement is then what, original in that perhaps he's trying to steal these plans to sell to make a better life for he and Cassie? We get a Lang origin with a slight tragic undercurrent while flashbacks of maybe a Douglas Pym having worked with Howard Stark perhaps?? Maybe even a younger Fury?

Having Pym be a bit older opens up the decade spanning narrative possibilities for sure. Would it be too jarring to have John Slattery come back in a flashback as Howard Stark in his latter years? It just seems this casting is set up to help show the tech evolution of the MCU with Douglas being cast.

This locks in that rumored script of years ago that both Pym & Lang would appear in Wright's film. Lang & Pym are both fairly active in the comics now as well. Even though O'Grady is dead in the comics I could see the character in his SHIELD role eventually appearing should the story need arise.

Very, very interesting news. Still processing the possibilities of this casting and how it could be applied to the greater MCU.

 

A 70+ man with a 30s women might play pretty creepy.

 

Stranger things have been known to happen.
I'm just spit balling. Douglas really pushing 70? At any rate with the right makeup and if they needed to some digital de-aging they can portray Pym younger than Douglas' biological years.

 

I would think so. That's kind of what Edgar Wright is known for. Shaun of the Dead was basically the first movie to completely integrate drama and comedy. (Of course there were other movies to include both, but it was always that when one aspect turned on the other turned off.)

 

I spent most of 1976 gestating.

Any chance that Alexander Pierce and Hank Pym are the same person?

 

Another very impressive hire, coming on the heels of Robert Redford in The Winter Soldier. But it looks like they don't have a long-term future for Hank Pym. He's not the creator of Ultron, he's not a founding Avengers, he's probably not going to have a Janet, and he won't be Ant-Man (I suspect he'll still create Pym particles). Why do you think he's been marginalized by Marvel Studios? The whole smacking Janet thing?

Pym can be a great character if written correctly. I thought Christos Gage did a great job with him in Avengers Academy.

 

Michael Douglas as Pym? If they didn't want Pym as Ant-Man, they should have just cast for Lang. Making Pym a senior citizen is just kind of lame, and it does basically remove Janet, unless she's either Lang's girlfriend or just Pym's older wife. Then again, if they cared about Ant-Man, he'd have made it into the Avengers before Quicksilver or Scarlet Witch. If they were going to go with an old guy, they could have at least hired someone cool, like Malcolm McDowell. He's less than a year older than Douglas, and he would be a cooler old Pym, especially if they went with more of an exccentric/mad scientist type character to go along with Lang, which is really the only good thing I can see for using an old Pym in the story. He could either be outright mad scientist, or just a weird scientist whose experimenting with the tech, then a younger guy (Lang) steals it, then they end up either working together or fighting. I guess they could do that with Douglas, but it wouldn't be the same. I can't say anything about his acting skill, because I've never seen any of his movies. I looked at his filmography on wikipedia, I have only heard of exactly two movies that he acted in: Basic Instinct and Last Vegas (I've seen One Flew Over a Cuckoo's Nest, but he was only a producer on that). He could be a decent actor, at this point I'm questioning why Pym has to be old more than I'm wondering if his actor is any good.

As for Rudd, I have no real opinion. He's really only been in bad comedies from what I've seen, but I can't think of anyone that stands out as a good choice for Lang anyway, so I guess we'll just have to see how he does. Still, Marvel is not very good at casting its smaller movies, like this or GotG. I'm sure Ant-Man will at least be profitable, probably riding on the fact that the bigger movies are doing so well and that will help it make some extra money, but I'm really unsure of its quality. I want a good Ant-Man movie, and I'm not quite ready to say that it will be bad, but its not looking good.

 

Cast.

From the old reports of this script, the idea was that Pym would be Ant-Man in the 1960s and Lang would be Ant-Man in the present day. If they're casting a big name like Douglas as the older Pym, I suspect they've reduced or eliminated the story of the younger Pym (otherwise they would have cast a young man and given him old-age makeup for the present day scenes), but I wouldn't be surprised if he was once supposed to have been Ant-Man in the narrative.

 

I mistyped. I don't think it really changed anything about the post, but I fixed it. I wouldn't want to leave a spelling error, it might have made the whole post nonsensical

 

The most exciting part of this news for me is the '60s Tales to Astonish era Ant-Man portion that's planned to be filmed. I loved Captain America as a period superhero movie and this sounds like something in a similar vein.

I was already excited to see this movie and this new information left me smiling all day.