The Ronin has learned that Marvel Studios has added Will Htay as the production designer of Peyton Reed’s upcoming Ant-Man 3 and could speak to the scale of the film.
Will’s impressive credits on massive blockbusters as a concept designer includes films such as Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker, No Time To Die, Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, Solo: A Star Wars Story. His work on Star Wars isn’t relegated to just feature films as has been part of the production design team on Disney+ series Kenobi and the untitled Cassian Andor show.
Reed is no stranger to Star Wars either as he directed Chapter 10 of The Mandalorian.
Returning cast members include Paul Rudd, Evangeline Lilly, Michael Douglas, Michelle Pfeiffer, and Emma Fuhrmann
Lovecraft Country’s Jonathan Majors is reportedly playing the villain Kang The Conqueror in the sequel which suggests the scale of the Marvel Comics sequel.
We’ve been hearing for months that filming on Ant-Man 3 will be taking place mainly on the stages of Pinewood Studios UK in Buckinghamshire, England and they’ll have access to The Volume/StageCraft for their shoot. The facility was used for upcoming Marvel films Black Widow and Eternals, the latter finishing up their reshoots.
Sam Raimi’s Doctor Strange In The Multiverse of Madness is currently shooting at Longcross Studios in Surrey, England with Elizabeth Olsen suggesting she’ll join them next month.
Ant-Man 3 is without an official release date but is coming out sometime in 2022.
In Chapter 10, directed by Ant-Man’s Peyton Reed, we see Season 1 actress Misty Rosas return after playing Kuiil (voiced by Nick Nolte) to take a new role of the Frog Lady fare and Richard Ayoade’s droid bounty hunter makes a brief return too.
Mando encounters some tie-fighter pilots leading to him wrecking the ship and stranding the group on an icy planet.
We also see a huge call-back to the white spiders created by artist Ralph McQuarrie for The Empire Strikes Back (seen above) and excellently used on this snowy planet, the new episode also homages both James Cameron’s Aliens and John Carpenter’s remake of The Thing. They were also used in Star Wars: Rebels and given the name of Krykna.
Between tackling the Krykna in this new episode and the Krayt dragon on Tatooine in Chapter 9, it is starting to feel like the visual effects budget has been greatly increased from Season 1.
Here is a new batch of concept artwork from Chapter 10.
It was recently reported by the trades that Lovecraft Country star Jonathan Majors has signed on to play the time-traveling Avengers villain Kang The Conqueror in Ant-Man 3.
The Tonight Show host Jimmy Fallon has now asked Majors if he had heard this rumor about playing Kang in the MCU and Jonathan responded as follows.
MAJORS: “It’s just you and me? Man, I heard the same thing, bro. I heard the same thing bro and was like ‘What, what, what?’. We apparently have the same source cause I heard it too.”
Peyton Reed is officially returning to direct Paul Rudd and Evangeline Lily.
Filming is expected to take place in the United Kingdom at Pinewood Studios UK and the studio is aiming for a 2022 release date, but that isn’t set in stone.
The other day I posted on Twitter that Ant-Man 3 won’t only be bigger as suggested by director Peyton Reed, but essentially an event film.
Well, it looks like there is some support to that as Deadline is reporting that Lovecraft Country’s Jonathan Majors has joined the film and is said to be possibly playing the super-villain known as Kang The Conqueror, who first debuted as Kang in the pages of The Avengers comic books and is also known as Nathaniel Richards (possible descendant of Fantastic Four’s Reed Richards).
The studio had no comment, but sources close to the project say he is likely to play the super-villain Kang the Conqueror.
A character that has been long teased to be feature in Loki, however, never confirmed.
It’ll be interesting if Kang indeed has connections to the Fantastic Four, but this MCU version might differ from the comic book version as Marvel does take liberties with the origins of their villains very often. Also, he more or less is likely coming into the picture because of the use/invention of time-travel in Avengers: Endgame and not exactly because the Fantastic Four are now at Marvel. But we’ll see.
I’m keeping my fingers crossed that Kang will be a Multiverse villain potentially from Earth X, the version of Earth where everyone has superpowers. It could be one of many way to introduce an adult group of mutants into the Marvel Cinematic Universe as they might have to abandon Earth X for the safety of 199999 aka MCU’s Earth.
Casting would suggest that they are gearing up to begin shooting in the near future and as I confirmed are indeed expected to released the film sometime in 2022, if all goes to plan. Filming is expected to take place at Pinewood Studios UK and most likely will implement ILM’s StageCraft technology which Reed used on Season 2 of The Mandalorian.
In a post-COVID-19 world, it looks like Disney is looking to adopt safer methods of production which includes expanding the use of the StageCraft technology used to shoot the first two seasons of The Mandalorian. Using this technology means less production crew would be potentially put in harm’s way for set construction and also limit the number of secondary exterior locations as productions traveling to multiple countries might not be the wisest idea at the moment.
The Hollywood Reporter has revealed that ILM’s StageCraft technology will be used for Marvel Studios’ Thor: Love & Thunder (MCU Cosmic mentioned this previously) at Fox Studios Australia in Sydney, New South Wales, Australia.
This comes after writer and director Taika Waititi had used the technology when filming the final episode of the first season of Lucasfilm’s Star Wars series The Mandalorian.
There has been an expectation that Thor: Love & Thunder will begin shooting sometime between January-February of next year as director Destin Daniel Cretton is trying to finish up production on Shang-Chi & The Legend of The Ten Rings allowing Taika to move in for the Thor sequel.
THR adds that they’ll also be adding StageCraft to the Pinewood Studios UK facility.
In addition, ILM is building a StageCraft volume at Pinewood Studios in London (expected to open in February), and a larger custom volume at Fox Studios Australia that will be used for Thor: Love and Thunder. Waititi previously used virtual production when he helmed the final episode of The Mandalorian season one.
Actor Ewan McGregor previously confirmed that his Star Wars series Kenobi directed by Deborah Chow (The Mandalorian) would be implementing the technology during an interview with Ace Universe back in June.
The next Marvel Studios feature film to shoot at Pinewood Studios UK is expected to be Peyton Reed’s Ant-Man 3, who happened to direct an episode of The Mandalorian for Season 2 just like Taika and may also be familiar with StageCraft after his own experience with that show.
Yesterday, I posted an update of sorts on Ant-Man 3 via Twitter that they are deep in pre-production and that we should expect some massive action sequences given they’ll be moving filming from Pinewood Atlanta Studios to Pinewood Studios UK, the latter facility has been used for the Star Wars films and traditional all of the James Bond movies as well.
We should expect this installment to feel more like an event.
#AntMan3 is well into pre-production and "big" is going to be an understatement… there is a reason this movie is moving to the stages home to BOND and STAR WARS.
I was also able to confirm Marvel/Disney is aiming to release the film sometime in 2020, however, release dates for the next little while will be in flux and most will unlikely be set-in-stone for the foreseeable future given multiple projects will begin production in 2021 meaning that some projects may have be delayed to 2023.
Peyton Reed recently mentioned that the film would be “bigger” and “sprawling” while speaking on The Jess Cagle Show and reaffirmed via Yahoo! Entertainment that Evangeline Lily’s Wasp would be getting equal billing on the sequel.
REED: “They’re a partnership, and she’s a very, very important part of that. And that was a very gratifying thing, I guess technically we were the first Marvel movie with a female hero in the title of the movie. Finding that balance in that movie, that’s very important to me because that’s very much a men’s playing field, historically. But that’s really, really changing now in a great way.”
I’m personally holding out the hope that we’ll see the film morph into some sort of MCU version of Guillermo del Toro’s Pacific Rim as Peyton Reed hasn’t been shy about how the films have been influenced by Japanese kaiju projects like Ultraman. Moving the setting of the film outside of San Francisco might also help shake things up given that Scott Lang might be allowed to move a little more freely around the world after the events of Avengers: Endgame.
Most recently the Pinewood facility has been used for Black Widow and Eternals both films are expected to be larger in scale than Ant-Man or Ant-Man & The Wasp. There is also an expectation that the Moon Knight series will spend some time there as well and we should be getting some updates on that show in the near future.
Doctor Strange In The Multiverse of Madness is confirmed for Longcross Studios in Surrey, England and it’s unknown at this point if they’ll have access to the StageCraft tech, but it’s possible.
This new technology certainly would cut-down costs and post-production time, the safety element is simply a massive benefit.
Marvel Studios is still trying to finish productions on both film and television shows they weren’t able to complete earlier in the year due to the COVID-19 pandemic, we finally have a neat update concerning Peyton Reed’s Ant-Man 3.
While speaking to The Jess Cagle Show on SiriusXM (via Collider), Peyton mentioned that Ant-Man 3 will be bigger and much more sprawling than the previous two installments of the franchise as they’re still working on the film during the pandemic.
REED: “We are working away through the pandemic. There’s some really really really exciting things in store, none of which of course I could speak to you about right now, as is the Marvel way. I think the third Ant-Man movie is going to be a much bigger more sprawling movie than the first two. It’s going to have a very different visual template.”
It might be a good idea to see them change gears with the upcoming film given that the Ant-Man films are arguably the ones that have the least connection with global audiences as reflected in the box office returns in comparison to the other solo films.
Thor had been in a similar situation before Taika Waititi took over with Thor: Ragnarok giving the franchise a much need boost of creativity and Sam Raimi’s Doctor Strange In The Multiverse of Madness is expected to up the stakes in a similar way. The commonality is that they’re including way more characters than previous films to help increase the energy and scale.
Considering the power-set of Ant-Man and Cassie Lang’s superhero persona of Stature the “bigger” sentiment might actually be literal.
One way to go is to really lean into the homage of Japanese kaiju movies as Reed previously has mentioned in the past. In 2018, Reed responded on Twitter to a fan question that Ant-Man’s suit was directly inspired by Ultraman and Infra-Man.
REED: “Ant-Man’s look wasn’t inspired by Kamen Rider, but I will say that we referenced both Ultraman and Infra-Man when discussing the suit. Close enough, right?”
Ant-Man 3 could be an excellent excuse to take on elements of traditional large-scale monster movies placing the MCU into the realm of the Monsterverse (Legendary’s Godzilla and King Kong cinematic universe) and Pacific Rim, given that there are plenty of large monsters in Marvel Comics allowing Scott or Cassie (as Stature) to battle building-size threats.
Having various creatures escape the Quantum Realm only to increase to a massive/destructive size could be a fun way to go.
Attempting to move things outside of San Francisco would also be nice change and could lead to the film being “visually different”. I’d love to see a Marvel Studios movie take place in Tokyo, Japan as we only briefly saw the location used in Avengers: Endgame.
Before the pandemic, Ant-Man 3 was said to be aiming for an early 2021 shoot and would be spending some of its production in the United Kingdom at Pinewood Studios UK and also return to San Francisco for exterior scenes.
We already know that officially Paul Rudd, Evangeline Lily, and Michael Douglas will be returning with the assumption that we’ll see Michelle Michelle Pfeiffer back as Janet and newcomer Emma Fuhrmann as the teenage version of Cassie Lang.
Shang-Chi & The Legend of The Ten Rings has finally resumed production at Fox Studios Australia in Sydney, New South Wales, Australia. Other productions such as Spider-Man 3, Doctor Strange In The Multiverse of Madness, and Thor: Love & Thunder have yet to begin as they were originally planned to start up in 2020 but will likely be bumped into 2021 leading to more production/release delays in the future.
While Disney/Marvel Studios haven’t officially announced a release date for the third Ant-Man movie, there is an expectation it could be ready to be released sometime in 2022 if production gets off and running next year.
THE RONIN 