Paul Rudd is Marvel’s next big-screen superhero. According to Variety, Rudd is now in early negotiations to star in the upcoming Ant-Man movie directed by Edgar Wright and co-written by Joe Cornish. According to Wright, Ant-Man will be a little different than the average superhero origin tale, and the casting of Rudd definitely hints to a more comedic approach to a Marvel film. He told Box Office Magazine back in 2010:
What we wrote for the first draft, and what Marvel really liked, is that it’s funny, but it’s a genre film. It’s about the level of comedy that Iron Man has. The idea is to make a high-concept genre film where it’s within another genre. His suit and its power is the big gadget and it takes place in the real world. I just wanted to do something that was slightly different than the superhero origin film. I felt that between that and the various mad scientist, crazy doctor films that we’ve all seen, this would be a way into an origin that was slightly different.
Ant-Man’s superpowers include shrinking down to microscopic sizes and telepathically communicating with insects, so it should be entertaining to see this through Wright’s comedy-leaning lens. And now that Rudd is Ant-Man and Chris Pratt is Star-Lord in the upcoming Guardians of the Galaxy, it should be no time until comedy stars take over superhero movies forever.