Marvel’s Phase Two wraps up this July when Ant-Man is released, and afterwards Phase Three will begin in 2016 with Captain America: Civil War. Among the many characters expected to appear in the threequel is Spider-Man, which will be his debut in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Avengers: Age of Ultron laid the foundation for the upcoming conflict between the heroes, but surprisingly, there’s a new report suggesting that Ant-Man may plant the seeds for Spider-Man - who will already be weaving his webs within the fictional universe by the time the film starts.
Latino-Review is reporting what they call an "unconfirmed rumor" (in other words, take with a grain of salt) that in the current version of Ant-Man there are "lots of talk of/references" to not just Spider-Man, but OsCorp as well. These are supposedly among the various tweaks and changes made during production. Although the article doesn’t offer a specific answer "how," it does mention that in the film, main antagonist Darren Cross, a.k.a. Yellowjacket, will try to sell the stolen Ant-Man technology to other corporations and organization, like the Ten Rings (the terrorists that kidnapped Tony Stark) and Roxxon (an oil company). They muse that this might be the best time to introduce the MCU’s OsCorp.
Even though the extent of these Easter Eggs seem to be just name drops and references, I find it hard to believe they’re real. To backtrack, Ant-Man began principal photography back in mid-August and finished in early December. Although director Peyton Reed admitted last month that there would be some reshoots for "minor stuff," it sounds like most of the film’s major footage was already good to go. Meanwhile, the deal between Marvel and Sony over shared custody of Spider-Man was announced in early February. Now granted, this deal may have taken a while to put together, but the timelines still don’t really sync up. So unless some of these "minor stuff" reshoots include adding a few lines of dialogue about Spider-Man and OsCorp, it’s difficult to see how Ant-Man could have filmed any Spider-Man material during the main shoot when Marvel and Sony weren’t even negotiating at the time.
While we’ll just have to wait and see whether there are any Spider-related surprises awaiting us in Ant-Man, Marvel is hard at work right now setting the stage for the MCU’s version of the wall-crawler. It was reported this past weekend that Marvel has screen-tested actors up for the role of Peter Parker, several of which may or may not have involved Robert Downey Jr. After appearing in Captain America: Civil War, Spidey will headline a new solo film set for release on July 28, 2017.
With or without any Spider-Man Easter Eggs, Ant-Man will hit theaters on July 17th.
