It would seem like a given that Edgar Wright would find a way to work Simon Pegg into “Ant-Man,” his long-in-development Marvel movie that is set right now to kick off Phase Three of Marvel’s world domination.
Honestly, though, I never would have guessed that Pegg would be suiting up for the role of Ant-Man himself, which makes today’s Twitter tease by Pegg an intriguing one. If you haven’t seen, Pegg appears to be touring Marvel today, and he’s sent out several images. There’s one of him with the Hulk, another of him holding Thor’s hammer, and then one final one where he is standing in front of a painting.
Innocuous stuff, right? Just a fanboy-turned-actor enjoying his tour of the space where they’re turning our collective childhood into a whole series of massive franchises, right?
But look closely at that last picture. Pegg is being very specific with that pose, and that one finger in particular seems to be announcing something that is pretty big news.
I don’t for a moment believe that Pegg is going to play Hank Pym, and part of the reasoning for why he might seriously be announcing that he’s going to play Ant-Man is because Edgar Wright and co-writer Joe Cornish are taking a different approach to this one than most of the Marvel movies so far.
If you’re familiar with the comics, let’s just say that Wright and Cornish are approaching things from a Scott Lang sort of perspective, not a Hank Pym perspective. That gives you an idea what you might expect, and if Pegg is onboard, then presumably he’s playing Lang or a character like Lang. That could mean there will also be a Hank Pym in the film, or it could just set up that Pym exists, but off-camera. They’ve been working on this script for a while now, and I have to assume they’re excited as they get closer to a start date. This was never a job that Marvel was casting a wide net for; instead, this was a project that Wright vigorously pursued because he loved what it could be.
Seeing his test footage at Comic-Con was revelatory. Just based on that one clip, I am confident that Wright will try some very new and crazy ideas in his action scenes, and I’m genuinely excited that he seems to be getting closer and closer to actually making the film. To be clear, @AgentM (Marvel’s Ryan Penagos) says that Pegg was touring the NYC office just to record a podcast, and that he’s not in the film.
What do you think? Is Pegg just playing a game with Twitter, or could he be set now to put on the Ant-Man suit for 2015?
Hopefully we’ll have answers to these questions soon.
In the meantime, “The World’s End” opens August 23, 2013.