Ant-Man

By now, everyone is familiar with the interconnectedness of the Marvel Cinematic Universe and how every film references what came before and what’s arriving next. So it makes sense that Ant-Man, the riskiest Marvel endeavor yet, will supposedly be filled with references to one of Marvel Studios’ surest things: the new Spider-Man. We guess the bug-themed superheroes have to stick together, huh?

You see the release date in the image there: May 6, 2016. Marvel Phase Three kicks off exactly one year from yesterday with the release of Captain America: Civil War. With the clock ticking, and the Avengers: Age of Ultron publicity tour finally winding down, it’s time to get to shooting Cap 3. Marvel announced today that production has officially begun on next summer’s massive sequel, and they also revealed four more big additions to the cast.

Marvel has long included Easter eggs in their films, referencing other superheroes and properties in the MCU throughout its current run with Disney. But there’s another Disney property that’s been acknowledged in the MCU: Star Wars. Marvel Studios head Kevin Feige reveals that they’ve used the same Star Wars Easter egg in each and every one of their Phase Two films, although you probably didn’t notice it.

Ant-Man may provide Marvel it's biggest challenge yet. Yes, even bigger than that movie that starred a talking tree and a talking raccoon. But, just as they turned the little-known Guardians of the Galaxy into one of the biggest movies of the year, Marvel may be able to do the same with Ant-Man. The new Ant-Man trailer has a balance of action and humor that might remind you of some friends from another part of the Galaxy.

Following suit with many of Marvel's other major movie properties, ​Ant-Man​ will soon be available in action figure form.

If you watched the new ‘Ant-Man’ trailer during the premiere of ‘Agent Carter’ earlier this week, you caught the note at the end to logon to EW.com to see more from the movie. Unfortunately, if you logged on, you didn’t really see anything, because all that stuff was actually in the magazine. But, now Entertainment Weekly’s new ‘Ant-Man’ images have finally appeared online and we get a good look at Paul Rudd in and out of the Ant-Man costume, as well as a new shot of Evangeline Lilly.

This week sees Nick Spencer, Ramon Rosanas, Jordan Boyd and Travis Lanham launch a new book over at Marvel in the shape of Ant-Man. Featuring the Scott Lang version of the size-changing hero, the series is pitched as being about a C-List Avenger trying to turn around his post-Avengers career and get a new job, so he can provide for his daughter, Cassie. He has an upset ex-wife, a crappy apartment, a criminal past, and no hopes – and that's how the series begins. With this first issue of the new series - which is on sale now - Spencer takes the jokey tone of his Superior Foes of Spider-Man series and downplays things significantly. While Foes was about villains trying to keep a criminal career going, here we have a hero trying to keep a heroic career going. Or, well, any career at all. It's a familiar concept for anybody reading Marvel at the moment, as most of their solo books are about the very same idea, played out in different ways.

It’s here. It’s finally here. The first trailer for Marvel’s ‘Ant-Man’ arrived during tonight’s two-hour ‘Agent Carter’ premiere. If for some strange reason you didn’t tune in to see Peggy Carter’s television debut (what’s your excuse?), the trailer has arrived online for your viewing pleasure. Following Marvel’s clever tiny teaser marketing, you’ll be pleased to watch Paul Rudd’s heroics in this regular-sized trailer.

If you’re going to make a movie called ‘Ant-Man’ about a superhero with the power to shrink down to tiny proportions and talk to insects, you better have a sense of humor about it. And that they do. Marvel has released the first ‘Ant-Man’ poster and you might want to get our your magnifying glasses for this one.

Okay, Marvel. This is cute. As exhausting as “teasers for trailers” can be, we’ll give you credit for this ‘Ant-Man’ preview, which is more of a snarky joke than an actual piece of marketing. Technically, this is our first look at footage from the upcoming film, but someone has apparently saturated the video with Pym Particles because the screen is literally too small for us to actually comprehend anything that’s going on.

For the past two weeks, there has been a deluge of 'Avengers 2' footage - clips, trailers, extended trailers, future trailers! - and we were promised one last reveal last night. While 'Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.' had the night off, ABC ran the Marvel TV special 'From Pulp to Pop,' which looked at the history of Marvel and Marvel Studios. It was mostly a rah-rah, pat-yourself-on-the-back kinda deal, but if you stuck around to the end, we not only got a look at 'Avengers 2' but also our first look at 'Ant-Man' footage.

It's kind of remarkable that Marvel Studios have already green-lit a sequel to 'Guardians of the Galaxy' -- a movie that, itself, doesn't come out for another few days. But this says less about Marvel's confidence that 'Guardians' will make money (and, let's not kid ourselves, it certainly will), but more about how the Guardians fit in with the larger story Marvel is trying to tell with the episodic nature of its films. And this episodic nature might just be what doomed Edgar Wright's version of 'Ant-Man' -- as opposed to it just being "too weird," which Marvel studio head Kevin Feige has denied.