Ant-Man And The Wasp: Adam McKay linked with screenplay

While promoting the December 8 release of Ant-Man on Blu-ray/DVD, Reed spoke to MTV about the second installment and the importance of showcasing Evangeline Lilly’s Hope van Dyne, aka The Wasp.

“We’re [still] in negotiations, but I think it’s looking pretty good”.

In fact, getting the chance to focus on the Wasp “was one of the things that was important to me in the first movie when I came on”, Reed noted. Peyton Reed took over what could easily have been a disaster after original writer and director Edgar Wright left the project and managed to mold it into a solid if not spectacular flick with a blend of action, comedy and drama.

His answer? “I was talking to [Paul] Rudd about it the other day”.

Part of that new territory will be Marvel’s first headlining super-heroine, of whom Reed said, “We’re going to have a fully realized, very very complicated hero in the next movie who happens to be a woman”. At this point it seems like a scheduling issue where if McKay has the time he’ll probably work on Ant-Man and the Wasp, and if he doesn’t then he won’t.

Now Reed tells Yahoo! He showed drafts of Ant-Man to Civil War directors Joe and Anthony Russo, so they could understand the character’s tone.

“There was definitely a point where I was a little envious”, he laughed. The two existing versions did massive pendulum swings from each other.

“I think they haven’t really gotten Mr. Fantastic’s powers right visually on screen”, the director said.

I’ve known McKay for a few time and we talked on the phone and we were both really jazzed about the idea of, in the third act, in a movie in which we will have seen shrinking a bunch, let’s take it even further in the third act and introduce what, in the comics, was the microverse, in what we call the quantum realm. “I’m convinced that it can work”. Ant-Man hits digital HD next week.