I Love You, (Ant) Man: Paul Rudd Cast In Edgar Wright’s Ant Man

So Marvel made it official yesterday: Paul Rudd has been cast as the lead in Edgar Wright’s (The guy who directed The World’s End, which was, bar none, my favorite movie of 2013) movie version of Ant-Man.

When Edgar Wright came to us with the idea of Paul Rudd, we felt a huge sense of relief because the first step in creating any Marvel Studios film is finding the right star,” said Marvel’s Kevin Feige. “We knew early on that we had found the right person in Paul. When he not only agreed to do it but became as enthusiastic as any actor we’d ever met with about doing the work, we knew we’d found the right guy. We couldn’t be more excited for our audiences to see what he’s going to do to bring Ant-Man to life.

Yes. He’s enthusiastic about “the work,” Kevin. He’s certainly not considering Robert Downey, Jr.’s percentage of the gross of Avengers and envisioning finally being able to tell Judd Apatow to fuck off when he calls at 3 a.m. with an idea for a gross, yet sweet, comedy about some experience Apatow lived through at some point.

Look: I like Paul Rudd. But I can’t address whether or not he’ll be a good Ant-Man. Because we still don’t know which Ant-Man he’s gonna be playing.

Miniscule Enthusiasm: Edgar Wright Releases First Ant-Man Picture

If you had asked me six months ago, I would have firmly stated, with a great deal of confidence, that nobody gives a shit about Ant-Man.

Sure, Ant-Man was one of the first Marvel superheroes, debuting in 1962, and he was a founding member of The Avengers, but seriously: the dude shrinks. So what? And it’s not even like he can go microscopic like The Atom and fight sentient viruses in someone’s body the way he did in World’s Finest Comics #236, which I read when I was five years old and have never forgotten.

Look at it this way: Ant-Man is so lame that Hank Pym has since gone on to be known as Giant-Man, Goliath, Yellowjacket and The Wasp… basically he’s tried to be anything so he doesn’t have to be Ant-Man.

So I didn’t really give a hoot in hell about the Ant-Man movie that Marvel Studios has on the slate for 2015… until one thing happened. I saw The World’s End by director Edgar Wright, who is also slated to direct Ant-Man, and it was bar none the best movie I’ve seen this year (Sorry, Iron Man 3, Man of Steel and The Wolverine). It became the first Blu-Ray I’ve ever pre-ordered to make sure I don’t miss it, it caused me to go back and revisit Shawn of The Dead and Hot Fuzz… and more importantly, it made me look forward to what he’s gonna do with Ant-Man.

And apparently he has started doing stuff with Ant-Man, because Wright tweeted this yesterday: