Peyton Reed Interview: Ant-Man and the Wasp

Bring It On’s Peyton Reed, took his expertise in filming choreographed action and brought it to Marvel Studios. His most recent film is Marvel’s Ant-Man and the Wasp, a sequel to Ant-Man and Captain America: Civil War. The superhero comedy hits theaters July 6, 2018.

Screen Rant: First of all, this will be so much fun. I don’t think I’ve laughed harder in a Marvel movie, like ever. And Ragnarok is great, so that’s saying something

Peyton: Yeah, yeah.

Screen Rant: Now, there’s so many comedy elements to this and you have so many great performers. Randall Park stole it from me.

Peyton: Excellent.

Screen Rant: I love his character. How much of that was on the page and how much of that was just those guys?

Peyton: Well, I love Randall. I’ve been a fan of his for a while. And the idea of bringing him in, and looking at agent Jimmy Woo, who’s a character in the comics.

Screen Rant: Sure. Agents of Atlas.

Peyton: And so, what’s the version of Agent Wu going to be like in our movie? And Randall is someone who is a great foil for Scott Lang, for Paul Rudd. And to see those guys riff together, because Randall can hang, and he gives us good as he gets with Rudd. And it was really, Randall and I worked a lot together about making Agent Woo. Like, he can’t be a joke because he has a function in this story. He’s the guy keeping tabs on Scott Lang. But we also liked the idea that maybe he really wanted to be friends with Scott Lang. He really kind of envies him a little bit, and there’s that back and forth. His performance is one of my favorite things in the movie.

Peyton Reed Interview: Ant-Man and the Wasp

Screen Rant: Now, one thing I said, move over Black Widow, because Evangeline Lilly, Hope, kicks ass. She’s so great in this movie. So how long was this idea floating around? Because this is really, I mean it’s an ensemble obviously, but I think it’s mostly focused on Hope and Hank a lot.

Peyton: Yeah. And I think after the first movie. Where she’s around the first movie not in a suit, but clearly the more capable person of taking care of the business at hand in the first movie. But Hank can’t see it and won’t allow it. So now, that at the end of the first movie, Hope, here’s the suit, I think it’s time. Evangeline and I talked a lot about her fighting style, her confidence, everything about that character. And it really is her story. It’s both Hank and her mission to find her mom. But we really wanted– we start the movie with the scene where you sort of see young Hope and the effect that the loss of her mom had on her. And that emotionally I think drives her through the whole movie.

Screen Rant: Yup. Now another question I have is, everyone loves trilogies. Any ideas that you have floating in your head for a trilogy? And do you think we can get something kind of like the Incredibles where it’s a family adventure thing? Because you’ve got Cassie, you got Hank, Scott, Hope.

Peyton: We have tons of ideas. And we had, as we were developing this one, we had a lot of ideas that we moved away from during the process. And if we’re fortunate enough to do a third one, we all have tons of ideas about where we think it will go. We really have only scratched the surface of the Quantum Realm. And there are all these elements I think that we want to be given the opportunity to explore. And I really, I’m also excited by the Scott Cassie dynamic.

Screen Rant: So am I. I was just going to bring that up. I love that we get a little foreshadowing for maybe Stature possibly in the future, when she says that she wants to be her dad’s partner. Now we know that James Gunn kind of advised his– had some input on his Guardians characters for the Avengers: Infinity War and Avengers 4. Did you have the same kind of thing with Scott in Avengers 4?

Peyton: Yeah, there’s a lot of crosstalk, which is great amongst directors. And again, even on the first movie, I had the Russos come in and look at early cuts of, just to see how Paul was playing Scott Lang, to inform what they did in the Civil War. And Markus and McFeely, who were writing the Avengers movies, we all talk about what the overall arcs are going to be. So, everyone is in sync about all this stuff. I can’t say much more than that or I’m going to get a Wasp dart in my neck. But yeah, that’s one of the exciting things, is keeping this movie a self-contained thing, but obviously being aware of how things fit into the larger universe. That’s a really fun, creative exercise.