Marvel's Ant-Man: July 17, 2015 (1 Viewer)

Marvel just announced that Ant-Man now has an official release date of November 6, 2015.
The movie is being directed by Edgar Wright.
It will be the second MCU film in 2015, following The Avengers 2 in May, and it's also the first official MCU "PHASE 3" film announced.
http://www.superherohype.com/news/articles/173197-ant-man-gets-a-release-date

Is the general movie-going public really clamoring for an Ant-Man movie? I remain dubious.

I feel the same way about Guardians of the Galaxy. There's the "they didn't know who Iron Man was" argument, but we're getting deeper into the barrel now.

Sure, the general public isn't anticipating properties like Ant-Man or Guardians of the Galaxy. I'm not really familiar with either of these properties, and I'm a huge fan of superhero movies.
But even though these aren't highly anticipated characters, I'm interested simply because I am a fan of the genre and what Marvel is doing (and has done) with their film universe.
Ant-Man was actually a founding member of the Avengers in the comics, and those who were fans of the comic wanted him in it. Since The Avengers 2 will be out in May and this will follow in November, I think it's pretty likely that he'll be introduced in Avengers (either as established hero or "pre-hero"), so six months after A2 the general public will probably have interest in seeing Marvel's next film with this character.
But I'm actually most intrigued by Guardians of the Galaxy. From what I can gather, it's seems like it will be something like Firefly meets Farscape but with superpowered beings! Sounds really cool to me. Have to admit, I'm still pretty iffy on Rocket Racoon, but I think it'll be cool.
And Guardians will likely feature Thanos (the powerful alien pulling the strings for the events in The Avengers shown in the mid-credits scene). It's a strong possibility that Thanos will also be the main antagonist in A2 and that the mcguffin in Guardians will also be relevant to A2 (like with the Cosmic Cube / Tesseract in Captain America).
I know they are "digging deeper", and that's true. But frankly, WB can take a top-ish tier character like Green Lantern and still make a stinker. Many viewed Iron Man, Thor and Cap as second tier (ish) characters, but Marvel simply made entertaining movies with them allowing audiences to care more about them and be excitted to see them in a team up like Avengers.
I have confidence that even if these titles aren't going to be the next Iron Man or Thor, they'll still be a positive addition to the tapestry Marvel is weaving with their cinematic universe.
And, of course, Marvel Studios is a movie studio. They have to make movies. And they have to work with what they have. They also didn't build to the huge success they had with The Avengers by playing it safe. They took some big chances with their plan for Phase One and it payed off. It's great to see that they aren't going to play it safe with Phase Two and are still continuing to make some risky moves.

Thought I'd post this here since it's kind of interesting.
At SD comic con they showed some test footage for Ant-Man. It was really just "proof of concept" stuff, not actual footage from the movie (which hasn't even begun production yet).
This footage has NOT yet leaked out. However, an artist who saw the footage did a rough re-creation to show fans what the deal was. Kinda neat. Anyway, here it is:

Sean Bryan wrote (post #5):

At SD comic con they showed some test footage for Ant-Man. It was really just "proof of concept" stuff, . . . .
. . . . an artist who saw the footage did a rough re-creation to show fans what the deal was. . . . here it is: . . .

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Uh, where are the ANTS? You can't have "Ant Man" without ants!

Marvel has moved the release date up to July 31, 2015. Sony is releasing the next Bond film on Ant-Man's original release date. So it was expected that this would be moved. Now it follows just three months after Avengers: Age of Ultron. It will also be the third weekend of The World's Finest, but the third weekend of even the biggest blockbusters isn't a bad time to release a movie. . Also, Perhaps Disney feels more confident in Edgar Wright after the great critical reception of The World's End.

Smart move by Marvel. Skyfall was well received and the next Bond movie would be highly anticipated. Better to open on MOS2's third weekend than go toe to toe with James Bond. Remember, World War Z opened a week after MOS and it did pretty good. It helped that MOS had mixed reviews so with Zack Snyder still behind MOS2, it should be another love/hate film split evenly down the middle. Ant-Man should do alright.

While I love the character, I think this could be a hard sell for Marvel. It's quite possible that few people besides fans are going to take a movie about a superhero called "Ant-Man" seriously. I'm hoping that I'm wrong and will be looking forward to the film regardless.

dpippel said:

...I think this could be a hard sell for Marvel.

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I agree but Marvel must know that so I think they'll be leaning heavily on Wright's comedic sensibility when selling this. Not that the character will be a joke but I think it will be a fairly funny movie in the hopes of getting the general public to buy into it.

Quite possible Travis, but they have to get butts in seats first.

TravisR said:

I agree but Marvel must know that so I think they'll be leaning heavily on Wright's comedic sensibility when selling this. Not that the character will be a joke but I think it will be a fairly funny movie in the hopes of getting the general public to buy into it.

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Back when it was first announced, I remember reading a British interview where the interviewer had gone in unshakably convinced that Wright was making some Shaun/World's End style Britcom Marvel spoof, and kept desperately, repeatedly trying to rescue his story by leading him off onto goofy Britcom jokes ("I mean, he's just about the least powerful superhero there is, right?")--But Wright kept sticking up in defense of Henry Pym and emphasizing how much of a fan he was of the original Avenger comics.
So I expect a little of both, but like no one expected the Elf/Zathura director would do a good labor-of-love job with Iron Man, I expect we won't get a goofed-off satire either.

(Now, the Scooby-Doo writer directing Guardians of the Galaxy, OTOH... )

Marvel is going to do to their movies what they did to their comics: make them a complicated hash that only people who have been following them all along can understand. Phase 1? Phase 2? WTF? It sounds like they are making a shopping mall, not movies.

Oh, I hope not Edwin. A few months ago, I decided I'd actually try and read some comic books. I'd been familiar with the characters and some of the better known stories through shared cultural knowledge, but had never read the material that inspired the movies. Trying to make sense of it is exhausting and frankly doesn't seem to be worth the effort.

The classic vintage stuff is easy enough to make sense of.

I went into The Avengers not having touched a current Marvel book in over a decade, and only having seen Iron Man on FX. I didn't feel lost in the slightest.

Edwin-S said:

Marvel is going to do to their movies what they did to their comics: make them a complicated hash that only people who have been following them all along can understand. Phase 1? Phase 2? WTF? It sounds like they are making a shopping mall, not movies.

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Quick glossary guidehase 1 - The solo films that introduced all the characters that appeared in "The Avengers" (Iron Man, Hulk, Captain America, Hawkeye's cameo in the Thor movie, etc.), so you'd know them when they showed up.
And thus ending with "The Avengers". Obviously.

Phase 2 - The solo films following up on the Avengers movie canon, and introducing the lesser-known characters who may or may not show up in Avengers 2: Age of Ultron, in 2015. (Eg. Thanos, the character who grins at the Avengers post-credit scene, has to be introduced/referenced in "Guardians of the Galaxy", since the Fantastic Four and the Silver Surfer, where he would otherwise normally appear, are both tied up by Fox.)

Phase 3 - You get the idea. They're thinking ahead.

How many phases do we suppose there will be?

Well, I'd say as many as they can pull off between now and when Marvel Studios decides to stop being Marvel Studios. I absolutely love that this whole thing exists. It's something I always thought would be cool as a kid but never thought I'd actully see happen .... an intertwined, interconnected comic book movie universe. It's never been done before. Their use of "phases" is a nice way of building their cinematic universe. Do several movies that are their own thing (yet clearly take place in the same world) and then do an "event movie" where the various separate characters get together. The Universe still grows and continues past the event film, but it's a nice sort of milestone. Then, the next "phase" begins. I really like that structure. Kevin Fiege said they already have tentative plans for their film slate through 2021.

SilverWook said:

The classic vintage stuff is easy enough to make sense of.

I went into The Avengers not having touched a current Marvel book in over a decade, and only having seen Iron Man on FX. I didn't feel lost in the slightest.

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True and the movies definitely don't require knowledge of the comic books. The comic books get confusing with all the different versions, timelines, universes, on and on.

Marvel's phases for there films are a great strategy.