While we will next see Paul Rudd don the Ant-Man costume for next year’s Captain America: Civil War, any future solo outing for the size changing hero was always expected to be kept for Phase Four or beyond (or in the case of a certain editor on this site, not at all). But’s that doesn’t appear to be the case, with Marvel Studio’s announcing a new Phase Three installment, Ant-Man and The Wasp, for July 6th 2018. This takes the spot originally earmarked for Black Panther, which is now set for February 16th 2018. A third date change sees Captain Marvel move from November 2018 to March 8th 2019. The announcement amounts to a whopping eleven movies making up Phase Three (Doctor Strange, Spider-Man, Thor: Ragnarok, Guardians of the Galaxy 2, Inhumans, and Avengers: Infinity War Parts 1 and 2 being the rest), and from 2017, we get to look forward to three Marvel movies a year.
As you would expect, Paul Rudd and Evangeline Lily will return for Ant-Man and The Wasp, with the movie building on the promise of Ant-Man’s mid-credit sting which saw Lily’s Hope Van Dyne being gifted with her own size changing suit, and promising something akin to the team-up books Marvel Comics puts out. The original movie, while not a gargantuan box office hit, was still a success for the studio, bagging a world wide gross of $409 million (it still has to open in China, which it will on October 16th, a proven game changer in recent years) off a $130 million budget. This puts it ahead Captain America: The First Avenger and The Incredible Hulk. Sure, it didn’t do Guardians or even Thor 2 money, but it did have the whole Edgar Wright controversy and the fact no-one in the main stream audience knew who the hell Ant-Man was going against it. With a movie and an appearance in Civil War under its belt, the recognition is there meaning second time round might go a bit better.
Marvel Studios also announced three more mystery films for 2020, debuting on May 1st, July 10th, and November 6th. While it’s unknown if these will be part of Phase Three, I find it highly doubtful. Instead, it’s likely they are the first three movies of Phase Four, and it’s anyones guess at this stage what they might be.
