Paul Rudd talks Ant-Man, Spider-Man and Civil War.

Ant-Man star Paul Rudd and Marvel’s Head of Production Kevin Feige answer the big questions from The Hollywood Reporter about Marvel’s new film ANT-MAN, in cinemas July 2016, and how he fits into a universe with The Avengers and the Guardians Of the Galaxy…

 

Back in 2006, you announced Iron Man, Hulk and Ant-Man as your initial trio of movies. But then you moved on to Thor, Captain America and Avengers. Why did Ant-Man get sidelined?

 

FEIGE That Comic-Con 2006 was less than 10 frickin’ years ago, but it feels like 50 years ago. That was the first time we had ever gone as our own studio. That Comic-Con was really about us trying to show people we were serious. But it’s not quite accurate to say that Ant-Man has been actively in development for all that time. Edgar [Wright] had done a draft, and then nothing happened for two or three or four years. Then he’d do another draft, and another two to three years would go by. It wasn’t until two years ago, we said, “Hey, let’s make this movie.”

So why do Ant-Man now as opposed to one of the other characters?

 

FEIGE If the stars had aligned, we would have made it earlier. Ant-Man will be our 12th Marvel Cinematic Universe film. Even when we had done only five or six, it was very clear that Ant-Man was going to be slightly different. It was an opportunity to tell a more intimate story.

We’ve never had a hero whose origin involved him having a daughter as a motivating factor for his redemption. And when you’ve had aliens pouring into Manhattan, artificial intelligence robots lifting cities out of the ground to annihilate mankind, supersoldiers, Norse gods and dark elves, there’s a lot of action going on. So the notion of shrinking down, to have an arena that is not another city or an entire planet or a fictional place like Asgard but is a bathtub, or is a rug, or is a little girl’s play set – that felt like a great opportunity to deliver Marvel’s thrills and action in a totally different way.

Paul, while this was being developed, you were busy doing a lot of comedies. Had you asked your reps to get you a Marvel movie?

PAUL RUDD No, but I rarely have those kind of discussions with my representatives about anything. I don’t have an agenda where I do a comedy and say, “I have to do a drama next,” or “I am looking for an action movie now.” The Marvel world wasn’t anything I thought about seriously because I guess I never imagined I’d get hired.

FEIGE We honed in on Paul relatively early. A very high bar has been set with Robert Downey in Iron Man. That idea was, find the best actor for the part, regardless of whether they’ve been in a movie like this before. Great actors, charismatic actors, who can connect to the audience on a deeply emotional and on an entertaining, charismatic level and also be able to pull off the action and look cool in a suit – the inherent likability you can’t train for, and Paul has that.

Paul, is a Marvel movie different from signing on to do some other movie since you know the character will appear in other films?

RUDD What’s different about it is that it’s a character who’s joining a universe that exists throughout several movies, and that’s like nothing I’ve ever done.

Let’s talk about what happened last spring. Kevin, you decided the script wasn’t right. But other studios have been in the same situation and decided to move forward anyway.

FEIGE Well, we’ve done that before, and sometimes that can work, and sometimes it’s more difficult. But with Edgar, it was mutual. People said, “You guys have been working together for 10 years; why did you only figure it out a couple of months before you started filming?” But that’s really not true. We’d been working on it for about nine months, maybe a year at most. And it became apparent to him and to us that the best thing to do was to move on. But because Edgar has a fan base and Marvel has a fan base, there’s good and bad that comes with that high profile. And one of the bads is that internal decisions and shuffles get headlines.

The movie’s really about fathers and daughters. Was that something that was always there?

FEIGE That was there. I think they enhanced it in many ways. But that goes back to the comics — the relationship between Scott Lang and his daughter, Cassie, is key to his origin in the late ’70s in the comics. And the addition of Hope Van Dyne as Hank Pym’s daughter is something that was in those early drafts from Edgar and Joe in the beginning.

RUDD These two guys are birds of a feather in many regards. If Scott is experiencing some of these things with his daughter, Hank can be maybe a few steps ahead of the game, but have the same kind of dynamic. It just seemed like interesting parallel stories to focus on, this idea of struggles that parents and kids have.

And how do you strike a balance between Ant-Man being a stand-alone movie and also having connections to the other movies?

FEIGE Ant-Man is one of the best examples of how a movie can do both. It’s absolutely a stand-alone film about Hank Pym and Scott Lang, but it is within this universe.

RUDD Essentially, this is a heist film, and if you look at the structure of heist films, there is always a test run and the test run fails. In talking about what could be a good test run, we were just playing around with conversations and thought, “Oh my God, what if he actually fought an Avenger?” We started getting really giddy about this idea. It seemed like that would be a fun way to incorporate the universe into this film.

Peyton Reed hasn’t directed anything like this before. Why did you turn to him?

FEIGE When I was a lowly man on the Marvel totem pole many years ago, he was attached to direct a version of Fantastic Four at 20th Century Fox. That version of the movie didn’t end up going forward. Peyton came very, very close to doing Guardians of the Galaxy for us. So when this came together, he ended up coming in and was 50 percent very enthusiastic to do a movie with us and 50 percent skeptical, but he read all the drafts and heard some of the new ideas we were already talking about with Paul and with Adam. Thankfully, he signed up.

How does Ant-Man fit into what you call the Phase Three cycle of Marvel movies?

FEIGE It really is the movie that closes out Phase Two. Phase One ended with Avengers. So some people thought that Phase Two would end with an Avengers film. But the truth is, there is so much in Ant-Man: introducing a new hero, introducing a very important part of technology in the Marvel universe, the Pym particles.

Ant-Man getting on the Avengers’ radar in this film and even – this is the weirdest part, you shouldn’t really talk about it because it won’t be apparent for years – but the whole notion of the quantum realm and the whole notion of going to places that are so out there, they are almost mind-bendingly hard to fathom. It all plays into Phase Three. It became very clear that Ant-Man is the pinnacle and finale of Phase Two and Captain America: Civil War [May 6] is the start of Phase Three.

You laid out the framework for Phase Three in October – how much room do you give yourself to move it around?

FEIGE Well, we already shifted once. Spider-Man wasn’t part of that announcement when we made it in October. So there’s always room to shift. But since we shifted the release dates a couple of months ago when the Sony agreement was announced, that’s the plan we’re very much headed toward, with Civil War being the first part of that. We go into production on Doctor Strange in November. The next Guardians of the Galaxy starts shooting around February of next year. The Spider-Man film soon after that. The third Thor film right about the same time. And we’re already beginning to prep: We’ve announced the writers and directors [Anthony and Joe Russo] for Avengers: Infinity War 1 and 2.

After Civil War, how much will Marvel be involved in Sony’s Spider-Man movie?

FEIGE Well, we’re producing it for Sony. It’s exciting, and we’re treating it like we treat all of our films. To try to make the best version now of Spider-Man and a version of Spider-Man that inhabits this universe that we’ve created. We’re in lockstep with [Sony Motion Picture Group chairman] Tom Rothman and [producer] Amy Pascal at every turn.

So some of your Marvel characters will show up in the Sony Spider-Man movies?

FEIGE Specifics of the story aside, the agreement that has been made between Sony and Marvel is that we could do that.

Do you risk giving up any of your autonomy by working with Sony?

FEIGE Without getting into the contracts, it’s definitely a Sony picture, produced by Marvel Studios. We’ve been working with each other for a number of months now. It’s been just as healthy as any of our internal discussions. We just look at it as having additional team members. We wouldn’t want to do it if we couldn’t do it in the way we’ve done all the other movies, and I think that’s what Sony wants from us.

How far away are you from picking directors for Black Panther and Captain Marvel?

FEIGE I think by the end of the summer, we’ll have most of those things. Black Panther especially.

Do you feel pressure to find a black director for Black Panther or a woman for the female superhero movie Captain Marvel?

FEIGE It’s an issue across the industry, for sure. And the issue is, we need to find the best director for any given movie. And that’s really where we always start. If diversity is part of that, it’s great. It’s important. You will start to see things across the industry as a whole change as more filmmakers come up through the ranks and become part of making movies like this.

Would you have liked to have had a woman director on one of these movies by now?

FEIGE I think it will happen sooner rather than later, without giving too much away. But you look back sometimes, and it’s just the nature of this industry, or the nature of the culture. But there’s a big shift happening. What’s exciting about Marvel, go back and look at the source material: It’s been diverse in a cutting-edge way going back to the ’60s, and I think we’ve represented that effortlessly and accurately in the movies we’ve made up to this point, but certainly with Black Panther and Captain Marvel doing it in a much more overt and purposeful way.

Ava DuVernay has been mentioned as a director for Black Panther. Is she under consideration?

FEIGE We’ve met with her for sure. We’ve met with a number of people for a number of movies. She has been one of them.

Looking to the future: Robert Downey Jr. has hinted his days as Iron Man might be numbered. If for some reason one of your actors doesn’t continue in the movies, do you recast or simply retire the character now that you’re developing new members of the Avengers?

FEIGE Thankfully, I’m not going to be faced with that decision for many, many years because we have everybody locked up and planned out for as far as any studio has movies planned. But one day, it will be a combination. It will be a combination of choosing which characters to continue on with and explore and which to bring in, as we’re doing with Captain Marvel and Black Panther. And certainly to recast in some way or another – as we’ve already done in certain cases. Certainly many other franchises have reached that milestone before we have and done that with great success.

So, Paul, have you also started shooting your scenes in Captain America: Civil War?

RUDD I did a couple of weeks ago.

And are you team Iron Man or team Captain America?

RUDD Those are government secrets. I was telling Kevin, it was the first time I really felt like I was in it. I started working on Ant-Man a couple of years ago, and I’ve been so immersed in it. But we’ve been shooting it in a bubble. When I went to the set of Civil War, I was 10 years old. There’s Captain America, there’s Iron Man. And not only that, but I’m doing scenes with them, calling them by their names. That feeling of excitement, the surreal nature of it is the best, it was great. I really felt for the first time part of the Marvel Universe.

You can view the full interview via The Hollywood Reporter.

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Check out these creative new Ant-Man promo posters below: