Paul Rudd on dealing with Ant-Man’s growing role in the Marvel Cinematic Universe

Last week, Paul Rudd was at the Sundance Film Festival with his new film The Fundamentals of Caring, the festival’s closing night film, written and directed by Rob Burnett, best known as David Letterman’s long-time producing partner.

We had a chance to sit down with the two of them for a forthcoming interview for ComingSoon.net and learned that Rudd showed up to film “The Fundamentals” right after making Marvel Studios’ Ant-Man, both of them being shot in Atlanta.

Ant-Man was certainly going to be one of Marvel’s riskiest movies even compared to Guardians of the Galaxy, but it did well enough, especially internationally, that Marvel and Disney greenlit Ant-Man and the Wasp for a July 6, 2018 release.

We wondered whether Paul Rudd had any idea how popular the character would end up being, to the point that Marvel would continue Ant-Man’s story into Captain America: Civil War, which comes out in three short months.

“I know that when I signed up for it that there was always the potential that they’d do another one or it would tie in in some way, but specifically, I wasn’t aware and I’m still not totally aware of how that’s the case,” he told us. “We are doing a second one, so those meetings are starting to be scheduled and underway as far as what it’s going to be. We’ll start writing it soon.”

The “we” is writers Andrew Barrer & Gabriel Ferrari, who were hired in December to write Ant-Man and the Wasp along with Rudd, who actually has been an uncredited writer on some of his previous films, according to directors.

“It’s been very easy,” Rudd said about scheduling with all the potential Marvel movies he has coming up. “Marvel’s been great, as far as if I have something else and they’ll work around it. It’s not like I’m working on a series which might be a little trickier as far as schedule. I worked on ‘Civil War’ and I didn’t really work on it for very long, but as far as ‘Ant-Man 2,’ I already know when that’s going to go, so you just kind of plan accordingly. If anything comes along that I can film before or after and it works out time-wise and it makes sense, Marvel’s been supportive.”

Look for the rest of our interview with Paul Rudd and director Rob Burnett very soon.