Marvel's Ant-Man (Earth-113599)

Marvel's Ant-Man is a 2015 live-action superhero film based on the character by the same name. It is the sixteenth film in the Marvel Cinematic Universe produced by Touchstone Pictures and Marvel Studios, as well as the final movie of Phase 2. It was released worldwide July 17th 2015.

Production
Ant-Man has a long history of complicated film rights and production trouble. The first talks of a film centered around the character came out during the 1980s when Warner Bros. Pictures, inspired by the success of Richard Donner's Superman and Honey I Shrunk the Kids approached Marvel with a bid to purchase the film rights for the character. However, they were unable to sort through the legality of purchasing the rights due to the studio already owning DC Comics. In the year 2000 Ant-Man became one of the last franchises that Marvel sold off being officially bought out by Lionsgate Entertainment. In 2001 they had hired Director Edgar Wright to produce a film on the character originally slated for a 2004 release date. The film ended up having budgetary issues involved with the making the shrinking CGI the way Wright wanted and the movie was delayed for years before the rights reverted to Marvel Studios in 2007. Kevin Feige and Avi Arad however approached Edgar Wright claiming they would be willing to adapt the experimental CGI and wanted to hire him to develop Ant-Man under Touchstone Pictures instead. He agreed to it and for the majority of Phase 1 it was believed that Ant-Man would be part of the Avengers before getting a solo movie sometime in autumn of 2012.

Unfortunately, more production problems occurred as Wright showed little desire for his film to tie into The Avengers which Marvel was heavily prompting him to. In 2010 Wright walked from the project and Disney quietly pulled the Ant-Man film from it's release date in 2012. At comic con 2013 Kevin Feige released the Phase 2 slate which revealed that the Ant-Man film was still planned, but simply delayed to summer of of 2015 off the heels of Avengers: The Ultron Imperative with Peyton Reed directing. By the end of that year Paul Rudd was cast for the titular role of Scott Lang as opposed to Hank Pym. Reed explaining that he wanted to focus on Scott to make the movie a "redemption story of sorts" and that the original Ant-Man was toyed with but decided his story was too similar to many other heroes already seen in the MCU. Nontheless, Pym was confirmed to play a major role in the film casted as Michael Douglas, who was soon followed in 2014 up by Evangeline Lilly playing Janet Van Dyne and Corey Stoll playing Elihas Starr.

It was later announced that Robert Downey Jr. would be reprising his role as Tony Stark in the film to better connect to the greater Marvel Cinematic Universe, which Peyton Reed expressed great enjoyment out of. Principle filming commenced in mid 2014 and the film was released worldwide on July 17th 2015.

Cast

 * Paul Rudd as Scott Lang/Ant-Man


 * Corey Stoll as Elihas "Eli" Starr/Yellow Jacket


 * Ken Jeong as Michael Tan/Swarm


 * Evangeline Lilly as Janet Van Dyne


 * Michael Douglas as Hank Pym


 * Michael Peña as Pedro Ortiz


 * Bobby Cannavale as Blake Burdick


 * Judy Greer as Magaret "Maggie" Burdick


 * Abby Ryder Fortson as Cassandra "Cassie" Lang


 * Martin Donovan as Sonny Burch


 * Robert Downey Jr. as Anthony "Tony" Stark/Iron Man


 * T.I. Harris as Charlie Buchanan


 * David Dastmalchian as Valentine Shatalov