Lilly showed Fraser-Allen three of her stories that could work as an illustrated children's book, and they eventually settled on The Squickerwonkers, a macabre tale about a troupe of uncanny misfits who come upon a young wealthy girl and (SPOILER alert for a children's storybook!) end up inheriting her fortune and becoming lords of the land. "[Johnny] showed me this watercolor painting with these marionette puppets," she says with a wide grin. "They were on a stage, and he told me, 'It's like a wooden stage in a traveling wagon.' … And I was like, Holy shit — he completed my world. It was what you hope and imagine will happen when you find your spouse."

Lilly and Fraser-Allen's creative partnership ultimately resulted in a two-book deal for The Squickerwonkers — Jackson, Walsh, and Boyens even wrote the first book's foreword. Lilly was, at long last, officially a professional writer.

And then director Edgar Wright (Scott Pilgrim vs. the World, Shaun of the Dead) offered her the female lead in Marvel Studios' Ant-Man.

"Initially, I was like, no way. No way." Lilly starts laughing. "And then they said, 'Paul Rudd's playing the lead.' And I was like, 'Oh shit. I love Paul Rudd. I really want to work with him!' So I was like, 'OK, well, send me the script. I'll read it and I'll consider it.' And then I started watching Marvel [Studios] movies, which I hadn't done before. … I'm a bit of a snob when it comes to movies — like, the popcorn-munching movies, I never go see them. I was pleasantly surprised." Lilly especially admired how carefully Marvel Studios had built an integrated cinematic world out of seemingly disparate superhero stories. "I thought, these are actually incredible — they're making fantastic films."

Lilly also pored over as much of the Ant-Man comic book lore as she could find before agreeing to the film. She learned that the original titular hero was inventor Hank Pym (Michael Douglas), who was married to Janet Van Dyne — also known as fan favorite superhero Wasp. She learned that the Ant-Man suit was later passed down to Scott Lang (Paul Rudd), and that her prospective character — Hope Van Dyne — was Janet and Hank's daughter. And she learned that fans take all of this very seriously. "I thought Edgar's idea to blend the [Hank and Scott] stories was brilliant," she says. "You're going to have fans up there who insist that you tell the story of Hank Pym, and fans up there who will be more on the Scott Lang side of it. … I think we are going to come close to pleasing them all. And what's cool is that, you know, Janet Van Dyne is my mom. Hank Pym is my father. I was raised by two superheroes. I'm no schlump. I'm a pretty smart, competent, capable, kick-ass female. She's very cool."

And then last May, Wright abruptly left Ant-Man, mere weeks before the film was due to start production. In a joint statement, the filmmaker and Marvel Studios cited "differences in their vision of the film," but Lilly was not satisfied with that explanation.