Marvel Announces ‘Ant-Man’ Movie, Unveils Test Footage, But Doesn’t Give Film Official Release Date
It was a clever ruse. While Marvel Studios planned for its late day panel of “Iron Man 3,” British filmmaker Edgar Wright tweeted away the morning as if he was in London, England, even referencing San Diego’s Comic-Con. But in a not-so-surprise move this evening (the cat was out of the bag earlier in the day), Wright joined Marvel Studios chief Kevin Feige, ahead of the “Iron Man 3” panel to show off recent test-footage shot for “Ant-Man.“
“Hello gang. I was tweeting that I was in London earlier, but I just BAMF’d here,” he said referencing Nightcrawler‘s teleportation powers sound in Marvel’s X-Men series. “Wrong movie, wrong studio. We talked about it in 2006 and I’m taking the Terrence Malick approach. It’s something that we have continued to work on. When I was very young I read a reprint of Man in the Ant Hill from ‘Tales to Astonish.’ I always felt there was a great film to be made out of it.”
” ‘Ant-Man’ will kick your ass, one inch at a time,” Wright said, before noting that there was no casting news.
While only one minute long and evidently not quite finished (though the crowd didn’t seem to mind), our reporter on the ground called the “Ant-Man” clip a “great little bit of test footage.”
“In a long white hallway, a miniature ant-sized Ant Man walks towards two giant (or normal size) bad guy agents wearing sunglasses and holding large hand guns. The look of Ant Man is very slick, sort of a modernized take on the classic comic look. Fans should be pleased. As he gets closer to the two men, he turns into a full-size man. The agents react and open fire. Ant Man charges them, leaps into the air, and disappears before their eyes. Turns out he’s back to ant size and running right down the middle of a pistol held by on of the agents. He leaps from the gun right into the right cheek of the agent delivering a full-sized blow. The agent’s face ripples in slow-motion reaction from the blow. Ant Man transforms into full-size form and makes short work of the two men. As they lay on the ground, an elevator behind the two men opens. Musack plays from the elevator. Ant Man calmly steps over the two men and gets into the elevator. The footage is brief, running only about a minute, but quite impressive. Ant Man looks good and the clip gives a nice idea of the possibilities for the character and the film. “
Shot for Marvel execs to show the tone Wright was aspiring for as well as what the effects/powers might look like in his incarnation, evidently the footage won them over quickly. But perhaps not to the extent that some imagined when rumors swirled today that Wright was in attendance at Comic-Con. Co-written by Wright and Joe Cornish (“Attack The Block“), fans were disappointed that no concrete release date was given. And as one journo, Jordan Hoffman tweeted, “It remains uncertain if there’ll ever be an Ant-Man movie, but it looks fun.” Strangely enough, “Ant-Man” was officially announced, although online, and not during the actual presentation which left some reporters scratching their head. – Reporting by Jeff Otto
