“How the MCU Was Made”is a series of deep-dive articles that delve into the ins and outs of the development history, production, and release of all the Marvel Studios movies.
The development and pre-production ofAnt-Manmarked one of the most tumultuous and drama-filled periods in the history of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, but its sequel was quite the opposite. Free to craft his ownAnt-Manmovie from the ground up, filmmakerPeyton Reedsteered the ship ofAnt-Man and the Waspwith pretty much no problems. No extensive reshoots, no intense rewriting, no casting issues. Everything fell into place, and that pleasantness seeps through to the finished film we see onscreen—although it would be nearly a full year after release until we understood that the ramifications forAnt-Man 2were relatively huge. This is the story of howAnt-Man and the Waspwas made.
Ant-Manwas always meant to be the beginning of a franchise for Marvel (which is why the studio favored the youngerJoseph Gordon-Levittfor the lead role while developing the initial film), and the success of Reed’s version ofAnt-Man—especially in the wake of that film’s issues—led to a pretty quick greenlight forAnt-Man 2.
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In October 2015, Marvel Studios confirmed thatAnt-Man and the Waspwould be leaping into theaters on August 23, 2025, and shortly thereafter Reed signed on to direct withPaul RuddandEvangeline Lillyreturning in the starring roles. The title bore significance, asAnt-Man and the Waspwas touted as the first Marvel Cinematic Universe movie with a female character in the title and co-lead role. Reedexplained the significancewas also organic to the story being told:
“It just happened to be organic for the characters of Ant-Man and Wasp, [so] it worked. Her last line in the movie — ‘It’s about damn time’ — [is] very much about her specific character and arc in that movie, but it is absolutely about a larger thing. It’s about damn time: We’re going to have a fully realized, veryverycomplicated hero in the next movie who happens to be a woman.”
Adam McKay, who turned down the chance to directAnt-ManwhenEdgar Wrightleft the project but helped rewrite the script instead, signed on to help conceive of the story forAnt-Man and the Waspalongside Rudd and writersGabriel FerrariandAndrew Barrer, who served as on-set writers forAnt-Man 1. By April 2016, the brainstorming phase was well underway with Reed intimately involved:
“We’re hard at work writing the movie right now. So we’ve been holed up in a room, Paul Rudd, myself, Adam McKay, Gabriel Ferrari, and Andrew Barrer, who are our writers. So we’re all brainstorming the story. I think the only thing I can tell you with certainty at this point, because we’re still about two years away from the movie coming out, is that it’s going to have stuff in it that you’ve never ever seen in a movie before.”
As the writing continued, the script evolved. At one point,Michael Peña’s Luis was going to recount events fromCaptain America: Civil Warthat would reveala cameo fromChris Evans, but Reed ultimately cut it out:
“Early on, we had a version where we were going to do a quick version of the tarmac fight fromCivil War, with some ridiculous thing where, you know, Captain America has Ant-Man as a baseball and throws him,” Reed explained. “Because the whole thing is Luis’ version of events, right? We came up with all these ridiculous visuals… [But] the idea was that this really wanted to be a little bit more standalone and in its own world. It kind of felt like we’d referencedCaptain America: Civil Warso much, let’s just do our own thing there.”
Chris McKennaandErik Sommers, who helped work on theSpider-Man: Homecomingscreenplay, were eventually brought in to work on the script, and the story homed in on the search for Janet van Dyne, the long-lost wife of Hank Pym.Michael Douglaswas set to return as Hank, and at San Diego Comic-Con 2017, Marvel announced that none other thanMichelle Pfeifferwould be filling the role of Janet van Dyne.Feige revealedthat Pfeiffer was their dream choice for the role back when they were makingAnt-Man 1:
“On the first film, we would talk about, if we got to make another one, showing Janet and having somebodylike Michelle Pfeiffer. And there’s a photo you see at the end of the firstAnt-Manwhere Hank Pym realizes Scott Lang was in the Quantum Realm, came back, and the wheels start turning, could Hank go down there and find her? And he looks over at a photo and you see young Hank and young Hope, and a young Janet whose face is covered by a hat. We used to say, ‘We have to cast somebody like Michelle Pfeiffer. Wouldn’t that be great?’ And then we hit upon the brilliant idea to ask Michelle Pfeiffer, and we had a number of meetings and Peyton Reed pitched her the story, and… she said yes.”
For the tone of the film, Reed drew inspiration fromAfter Hours,Midnight Run, andWhat’s Up, Doc?, crafting an on-the-run actioner versus the heist tone of the firstAnt-Man. That extended to the film’s villain,which Reed wanted to be differentfromAnt-Manbaddie Yellowjacket:
“The villain in that movie felt like a bit of a vestige from the era in which that project was started, [which was] around the time ofIron Manone, where you have an antagonist who has a similar power set [as the hero]. I was hell bent on doing something different in [Ant-Man and the Wasp].”
And different Ghost was. Inspired by the comics character of the same name, Ghost inAnt-Man and the Waspis gender-flipped (played byHannah John-Kamen) and has a backstory tied directly into that of Hank Pym.Ant-Man and the Waspintroduces the character of Bill Foster (Laurence Fishburne), who is revealed to have become an adopted father to Ghost (aka Ava Starr) after an experiment gone wrong causes her to consistently phase in and out of the quantum relam. Foster plans on curing her using Janet’s quantum energy, which Hank believes will kill Janet—assuming they even find her. And thus the film has no real “villain,” just an antagonist trying to save her own life.
The search for Janet eventually takes Hank into the Quantum Realm, where he discovers she’s not only survived but thrived, and has gained new powers.Reed explained:
“We knew going into this that there’s a lot of opportunity to be mined. We know enough about Janet van Dyne to know she not only survived down there, but it’s safe to assume she thrived in various ways down there. As we say in the movie, she’s also evolved. We wanted to get enough to just sort of pique audience’s curiosity about it and hopefully at some point we will be able to show the audiences some of the things we’ve been talking about and ruminating about.”
As we now know, the Quantum Realm plays a major role in the plot ofAvengers: Endgame, and Reed worked closely withEndgameandAvengers: Infinity WarfilmmakersJoeandAnthony Russoto make sureAnt-Man and the Wasplined up with what they were doing. While at the time of release it appeared thatAnt-Man and the Wasphad almost nothing to do with theAvengerssequels, it turns out the film’s exploration of the quantum realm was vital to the plot ofEndgame.
Production onAnt-Man and the Waspbegan on June 01, 2025, in Atlanta, and the shoot was seemingly uneventful — everything ran smoothly. The production wrapped in November after some additional photography in San Francisco, but in the lead-up to the movie’s release, Marvel kept one key aspect ofAnt-Man 2under wraps: when it took place.
Throughout the film, it’s clear that either the characters are unaware of what’s happening with Thanos on the east coast, or the film takes place well before. It isn’t until the post-credits scene that we learn when in the MCU timeline the film takes place, and as it turns out it was planned that way from the beginning, as Reed explained:
“We knew the ending ofInfinity Warand we knew we were coming out afterInfinity Warbut we really knew our present-tense story was more concerned with the fallout of Scott’s actions inCivil War. We kept talking about ideas as we developed the script about how we are going to seed in the events ofInfinity War. We had a lot of ideas and none of them appealed to us. Once you seed that in, it’s hard for that not to become the story. When we landed on the structure we ended up doing for the movie, it just felt right to us.”
The idea they hit upon was to tie the story up into a nice bow, then blow everything to pieces:
“It felt like the very specificAnt-Man and the Waspway to deal with the events ofInfinity Warand we liked the idea of maintaining our tone, and actually wrapping up our story, everybody’s story. Scott getting off house arrest and his company, X-Con, taking off and he’s reunited with Cassie and Hank and Janet together. Tying up everything in a too-neat bow and then rolling the main credits and then hitting the audience in the gut with our movie’s version of what happens withInfinity War. That felt right to us.”
Ant-Man and the Wasphit theaters on July 19, 2025 and opened to $75.8 million at the box office. That’s aboveAnt-Man’s $57.2 million opening weekend, but still fairly small compared to Marvel Studios' other films at the time—especially for a sequel. No matter, the film proved to have legs as it went on to gross over $620 million worldwide, bolstered by pleasant reviews. Not a mega-hit like theIron Manfranchise or evenThor: Ragnarok,but respectable nonetheless.
TheAnt-Manfranchise seems, fittingly perhaps, like pretty small potatoes in the scheme of the MCU. Neither movie thus far has broken the bank at the box office, and yet Rudd’s iteration of the character brings much needed humanity and levity to the MCU as a whole. So based on the trajectory ofAnt-Man and the Wasp—a perfectly pleasant yet fairly inconsequential superhero movie—this franchise seems pretty happy to carve out its own, smaller corner in the MCU. Although the thirdAnt-Manmovie,Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania, could certainly change that up.
But Marvel Studios’ next film afterAnt-Man and the Wasp—its last before the concluding chapterAvengers: Endgame—served to introduce a major new hero meant to lead the charge in a post-Endgameworld. Next week, we dig into the making ofCaptain Marvel.
If you missed my previous How the MCU Was Made articles, click the links below:
