We've been excited for Edgar Wright's Ant-Man ever since it was announced all the way back in 2006. Naturally, we were absolutely elated when Marvel Studios finally announced a release date for the film last October, dating it for November 6, 2015, but now we have some even better news: about three months have been cut off of that wait time. Deadline is reporting that Disney and Marvel have opted to shuffle around their 2015 schedule and will now have Ant-Man ready to be released on July 31, 2015.
What's kind of crazy about this news is how busy the summer of 2015 already is. Not only does Marvel already plan to have Joss Whedon's The Avengers: Age of Ultron in theaters on May 1st of that year, we are also anticipating the releases of J.J. Abrams' Star Wars: Episode VII, Zack Snyder's Superman/Batman movie, Alan Taylor's Terminator reboot, Colin Trevorrow's Jurassic Park 4, Joachim Rønning and Espen Sandberg's Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales and more. Crowded as the season is, however, the only competition on Ant-Man's new release date is the novel adaptation Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children (though it is just two weeks after Snyder's film).
There doesn't seem to be any official reason for why the movie is changing dates, but it's hard not to immediately speculate that Marvel might be trying to fit in a third film for 2015. That said, producer Louis D'Espositio recently said in an interview that trying to make three movies per year is still a challenge that the studio isn't ready to face. "We do two films a year. To get those two films done and to do them right takes a lot of work and manpower," he said. "To add a third film and to just put it in the slate right now is difficult. We have these next three, four, five films coming out and that's what we're really concentrating on."
By moving to July Marvel is having their 2015 calendar mirror the schedule that they had in 2011. That year Kenneth Branagh's Thor was released in the first week of May and Joe Johnston's Captain America: The First Avenger came out in late July. The release dates seemed to work as both movies were considered hits. The studio will be doing the exact same thing again in 2016 with their two untitled projects. Next up for Marvel will be Thor: The Dark World, which will be out in November, and then Joe and Anthony Russo's Captain America: The Winter Solider, which will be out in March. James Gunn's Guardians of the Galaxy will follow on August 1, 2014.
The really interesting part of this news is that it that it means the production schedule for Ant-Man will have to get moving a lot sooner than originally anticipated. The Avengers: Age of Ultron is starting up in the first couple months of next year, and Ant-Man will likely follow just a few months later. Of course, this also means that we'll be hearing a whole new round of Ant-Man casting rumors again soon. Nathan Fillion? Alan Tudyk? Leave your votes in the comments section below.
