‘Ant-Man & The Wasp: Quantumania’ Director Peyton Reed On How Kang Came To Be & Why Big Screen Romantic Comedies Aren’t Dead – Crew Call Podcast
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Gotta admit, but Josh Brolin’s big baddie Thanos does cast a big shadow in the older Marvel movies.
But now there’s Jonathan Majors’ Kang the Conqueror, who debuted as the variant He Who Remains in Disney+’s Loki and surges in all testosterone in this weekend’s Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania, which is set to debut to a franchise global record of $280M. The catalyst for all that? Why it’s all Kang.
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The film’s director Peyton Reed tells us on Crew Call today how the whole Kang of it all came to be.
You can listen to our chat below:
Essentially the progression toward Kang in the MCU and Ant-Man began with the jumping off point of Michelle Pfeiffer’s Janet Van Dyne and what she had been up to in the Quantum realm, that sector introduced in the previous 2018 installment Ant-Man and the Wasp. This led Reed, Marvel Boss Kevin Feige and Ant-Man producer Stephen Broussard to turn their attention toward the “Mount Rushmore of Marvel Comics villains, Kang the Conqueror” Reed explains.
True, it’s a “lopsided confrontation” per Reed between Ant-Man, his friends and Kang, “But there was dramatic confrontation in that”.
“Let’s beat Scott Lang up a bit” he adds.
The other allure of Kang and Janet? It boiled down to “the secrets that families keep from each other..She hadn’t told them about her encounter with Kang!” says the filmmaker.
Reed expounds on casting Majors for the part of Kang, the “beast of a scene” involving multiple Paul Rudds and the future of the romantic comedy on the big screen; the director being behind such blockbuster benchmarks as Bring It On and The Break Up.
Despite the genre migrating to streaming, “there’s no way the romantic comedy is dead” says Reed.
“I don’t know if this young generation has their flagpole,” he adds, “but there’s a version of a romantic comedy that will draw an audience”
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