With the male leads all but completely sorted in Edgar Wright's upcoming Ant-Man, the time has come to talk about the fairer sex. Since the film has been development at Marvel Studios we have heard a number of names mentioned in regard to possibly playing the part, including Olivia Munn, Eva Longoria, and Rashida Jones, but now a new name has entered the game and it looks like she is the new frontrunner. Variety is reporting that Evangeline Lilly, who got a taste of blockbuster filmmaking appearing as Tauriel in Peter Jackson's The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug at the end of last year, is now reportedly being eyed to play the female lead in Ant-Man.
What's interesting about the trade report is that it fails to specify exactly who Lilly might play. The first instinct is that she will be playing Janet Van Dyne, also known as the superhero Wasp, but it's unclear how that character would fit into the mix with an older Hank Pym (Michael Douglas), who is Van Dyne's husband in the comics. Instead, Variety says that there is a chance that Lilly will be playing Hank Pym's daughter and Scott Lang's (Paul Rudd) love interest. As the trade notes, Pym doesn't have a daughter in the comics, but it's entirely possible that screenwriters Edgar Wright and Joe Cornish are changing things up for the Marvel Cinematic Universe version of the story (after all, they are using an Ultron that wasn't created by Pym in the Avengers sequel).
For those unfamiliar with Van Dyne, she is a superhero who, like Ant-Man, has the ability to shrink herself down to bug-size. Unlike Ant-Man, however, she also has both the ability to fly and fire bio-electric energy blasts from her hands. It's unclear how much of this might actually make it into the film or if Wright and Cornish are even using the character, but it doesn't hurt to know the information. You can get a taste of what the character is like in the clip below from the animated series Avengers: Earth's Mightiest Heroes.
Lilly has long been known for being picky about the roles she chooses. With the exception of The Hobbit, the only films that she has appeared in since the end of Lost have been The Hurt Locker and Real Steel. It's worth noting that Variety says she is only in early talks for Ant-Man right now, so nothing is a done deal.
Marvel Studios and Disney plan to have Ant-Man in theaters on July 17, 2015 and production is on track to begin this spring. Are you excited that Lilly may be joining the film?
