Exclusive Interview with Ant-Man Director Peyton Reed and Marvel President Kevin Feige #AntManEvent

If you had told me a few weeks ago that I would have gotten to stand next to Marvel President and Ant-Man Producer Kevin Feige I would have laughed at you. In fact, up until a couple of minutes before the interview I had no idea he was coming. We though we were just getting to interview Ant-Man Director Peyton Reed which in itself was super amazing. If you have not seen Ant-Man, it is in theaters NOW! Go see it. Take your kids. It’s so kid friendly. You can check out my Ant-Man review post.

So Director Peyton Reed should be well known but in case you don’t know, he is the director of Bring It On. And Ant-Man. I know you just needed to hear Bring It On to know how awesome he is. He has a lot of movies and many episodes of some great television shows under his belt including Cashmere Mafia, The Weird Al Show, and the Break Up. So it should come as no surprise that he helped make Ant-Man fantastic.

Peyton Reed – In terms of the comedy I love the idea that it can have big stakes and have heart but it’s funny and I really like the idea. I wanted to make it sort of a tight, fun movie that hopefully is a repeat movie going experience that makes you feel good and it’s fun. And in particular when you have Paul Rudd at the center of it you know, it’s gonna be funny.

I agree with that. Paul Rudd does make everything funny. In our interview with Paul Rudd and Evangeline Lilly, we found out about which type of ant Paul liked most. Obviously Antony was the actual ant he liked the most in the movie. And Peyton Reed actually knows the scientific names for them and he would correct them on it. I think that’s awesome that he researched it that much for the movie.

One of the funniest parts of the movie was the heist though. The Antourage plus Paul Rudd makes any situation funny so it is something to look forward to when you see the movie. And when you go back and see it again. Peyton Reed said he did a lot of research into heist movies.

Peyton Reed – I actually did go back and look at a bunch of heist movies, you know, Oceans Eleven and Thomas Crown Affair and things like that. But there’s a certain rhythm that these heist movies have and they’re sort of, they’re sort of tropes that appear in these movies. But I wanted to be really kinetic and have a lot of movement to it. And I think there is a big correlation between how a comedy plays and how you shoot a comedy to how you build tension. It was something that was always there in the original scripts….

But the heist movie idea was a fun structure to work in. And something that came about was in all the heist movies, they’ve got the plan in place, everything’s in place but, “Oh no, there’s just one element that we still have to get and I think it was Adam McKay who came in and said, “What if that required Ant Man who’s not quite prepared to go in and maybe face this other Marvel character? I loved that idea immediately, I thought that idea was fantastic. As a kid Marvel characters meet each other and how does this power stack up with this one? And so that was something that was incredibly fun to shoot in the movie and really sort of served the purpose in the plot of it’s this, he’s thrown into this way before he’s ready to come up against the guy like the guy he comes up against.

 

 

Ant-Man is not his usual type of movie so we asked him about why he decided to do a movie like this and what he hoped to acheive with the movie.

Peyton Reed – Well, it’s a kind of movie that I’ve wanted to do for a really long time and technically, it’s a big departure. There are I think 1600 visual effects in the movie, it’s a big deal in that regard. But it really is what Marvel does extremely well. I mean, we have Jake Morrison who’s our Visual Effects Supervisor. I spent a lot of time with him and sort of talking about the look of the movie and the realism that we wanted. We were gonna be doing what’s hopefully the definitive “shrinking movie” for 2015. And we really wanted it to, unless there are other shrinking movies that I don’t know about but, you know, it had to look as photorealistic as possible.

And it really had to put the viewer down in that environment. When he shrinks down we were gonna be shrinking the audience down with him. And what would that look like and feel and how are we gonna achieve that? ‘Cause if he’s running across a table I wanted to really feel like the texture of the table and all that. So Marvel just happens to employ the top people in Hollywood for doing that and it was a huge education for me in that regard and but loved it. It’s amazing and the stuff that they are able to pull off is, it’s kind of mind-boggling.

Spoilers:

Midway through the interview Kevin Feige was asked about a picture of Ant-Man on the end of one of Hawkeye’s arrows and if that would ever come to light. He laughed and said “That’s a great image, I love that image and usually images I love find their way into movies. So…”  So I am very excited to see if that is true. I love Hawkeye the most so having him team up with Ant-Man in a later movie would be super awesome.

He also said that the line where Hope van Dyne says, “It’s about damn time,” is one of his favorites in his films. If you havent seen the movie turn back now. She says it in a mid credit scene (real Marvel fans stay through the credits) where her father reveals the upgraded Wasp suit to her and says he is sorry for trying to hold her back. Recently, Kevin Feige did announce that the Wasp would be in a Phase 3 Marvel film. He says that they love adding powerful women to Marvel movies because we all have powerful women in our lives. It’s the way of the world.

That’s me in the middle with my arm around Kevin Feige. Yep. I was internally screaming. The man behind these amazing Marvel films. The man who decides what is coming next and is holding the whole nerd/geek/dork fandom hearts in the palm of his hand gave me a hug. And he shook my hand. If that doesn’t make me the coolest girl in the room then I don’t know what will.

Ant-Man is out in theaters NOW! Go see it and bring the kids. Go see it by yourself. Paul Rudd is very cut in the film so there is that. The whole cast is pretty attractive actually especially Evangeline Lilly. It is so family friendly and it packs the laughs.