Peyton Reed Wants To Get Weird With The 'Ant-Man' Sequel

This year audiences embraced a hero named Ant-Man. I imagine some folks at Marvel were worried if moviegoers would accept a miniature crime fighter with such a refreshingly uncool name — and the bizarre power of commanding ants – but the film was a critical and commercial hit, especially overseas. After the success of the movie, director Peyton Reed can take even more chances with the Ant-Man sequel, and he plans on doing just that.

After the jump, learn what Reed has in store for Ant-Man and the Wasp.

Reed is just beginning the writing process on the sequel, which Adam McKay (The Big Short) may or may not take part in. The Down with Love director has more than a few advantages on the sequel than he did on the first film. Reed is not replacing another director this time around, and the last film did much of the legwork. There was a lot of exposition in Ant-Man (made very digestible by Michael Douglas), but now that the setup has been completed, there's more room to play with the next installment.

Reed told Newsrama he wants to get much "weirder" with the sequel and really explore Ant-Man (Paul Rudd) and the Wasp's (Evangeline Lilly) dynamic, hence the title Ant-Man and the Wasp:

The goal is to keep what we really liked for the characters in the first one, but to make it a much weirder movie. Part of thing that we're going to explore, as shown in the comics, is how [the Ant-Man and Wasp] are such a great duo and partnership. Part of that, in any partnership, is how they relate to each other as people. Where will their personal relationship be at that point, and what will be their fighting style together?

By making a weirder film, Reed will probably delve further into the Quantum Realm. I spoke with the director around the release of Ant-Man, and he was excited about the possibility of exploring Dr. Hank Pym's complicated relationship with the Quantum Realm.

Hope Pym is one of the better female characters we've seen in superhero movies. Lilly was well cast, had a believable chemistry with Paul Rudd, and the character had her own arc, so she wasn't always supporting the male hero's journey, which is almost always the case with comic book movies. Reed loves the character, so he told MTV he plans on having more of her in the sequel.

That was one of the things that was important to me in the first movie when I came on was emphasizing the Wasp more, both Hope Van Dyne and Janet Van Dyne. It's a crucial part. It's a crucial part because in the comic books, with the exception of the first handful of Ant-Man stories, Wasp came on pretty early on in the comics in the '60s and you really thought of them as a partnership, a romantic partnership as well as a hero team. It's going to be fun to play around with all the aspects of that in this movie.

Ant-Man and the Wasp opens in theaters July 6th, 2018.