Evangeline Lilly In Talks For ANT-MAN Role

Evangeline Lilly is in early talks to appear in Marvel Studio’s upcoming Ant-Man. Her role in the film has not been announced, though the Hollywood Reporter is stating that “it is not intended to be a one-off appearance.”

For those who are familiar with Ant-Man as published by Marvel Comics over the last several decades, the first thought for a lead female character for the movie goes to Janet Van Dyne, a character who has been linked to Ant-Man for a majority of their mutual history. But the Ant-Man that Janet Van Dyne has been linked to is Henry Pym, the first of the heroes to us the shrinking technology that characterizes the heroes main power. The pair have gone through a romance, marriage and rocky divorce with Van Dyne eventually using Pym’s shrinking technology to become the superheroine known as The Wasp. However, it has already been reported that the hero of the film will be Scott Lang, the second person to wear the mantle of Ant-Man. Pym will still be in the film as the developer of the shrinking tech, but will be played by Michael Douglas, while Paul Rudd will be playing Lang.

So we are left with two possibilities – 1) Director and co-writer Edgar Wright’s screenplay calls for a May-December relationship between Van Dyne (Lilly) and Pym (Douglas), or 2) Wright has restructured the Van Dyne/Pym relationship into one between Van Dyne and Lang.

Now there is an alternate character that Lilly could be playing – Lang’s wife and the mother of his daughter Cassie. It is mounting medical bills from an illness which Cassie is suffering form that leads Lang to initially steal Pym’s Ant-Man uniform. But given that the Hollywood Reporter is stating that this is a character who could make multiple appearances in upcoming Marvel films suggests to me that we are probably looking at Lilly playing Janet. And with Ant-Man kicking off Marvel’s Phase Three group of films, I would not be surprised if both Ant-Man and the Wasp make appearances in the inevitable Avengers 3.

Ant-Man is set for a July 17, 2015 release.