'Ant-Man And The Wasp' Will Not Be Another Heist Film

Ant-Man is just as much a heist movie as it is a superhero movie. Peyton Reed's Marvel origin story didn't feel like most comic book movies because of its crime caper tropes. The sequel, however, will not return to the heist genre.

Learn more about Ant-Man and the Wasp after the jump.

Reed shared quite a bit of information today with Comic Book Resources about his next film. The best sequels generally carve out their own identity, while also retaining what was appealing in the first installment. That's a balance the director hopes to achieve with Ant-Man and the Wasp:

I think there's probably going to be some aspects that maybe call back to the tone of [the first movie], but for Ant-Man and the Wasp, we have an entirely different template. We know what that template is, and we have an entirely different genre template for that movie. But it's going to remain a surprise. But yes, that's already been decided.

The scripting phase won't start until January, and since the film is two and a half years away, obviously Reed doesn't specify the Ant-Man 2 genre. Director Adam McKay said he's interested in returning for the sequel, if his schedule allows it. According to Reed, McKay will be involved:

Well, definitely, Paul [Rudd], and we've got [Andrew] Barrer and [Gabriel] Ferrari, who were not credited on the movie, but they're our production writers, they're coming back. And Adam's going to come back in some capacity. A lot of it has to do with his schedule on [his new movie] The Big Short, because he's promoting that movie and is probably, I would think, well into the Oscar season. [...] We talked about Ant-Man, and he's psyched to come back. We want him back. It's going to be a scheduling thing.

Ant-Man and the Wasp will continue to explore the father-daughter relationships from the first film. If Janet Pym returns, which is a possibility, then a mother-daughter dynamic would bring a fresh perspective to the "weird" sequel.

We'll next see Ant-Man in Captain America: Civil War, and Reed intends on delving into Hank Pym's identity and his relationship to being a superhero in Ant-Man and the Wasp:

Yeah, I mean, it's such a crucial part of his character in the comics. I think to ignore that would be crazy, because there's a lot of rich stuff. Not only with the different sort of super heroic identities that he had in the comics, but just his psychology. We do set up in the movie that when Scott says to him, 'Why don't you just put on the suit?' He's like, 'I can't. I did it for a long time, and it took a toll on me.' It's like, 'Well, what does that mean, exactly?' I think there are a lot of things that we're going to explore in the next one that will explain a lot of that stuff.

Ant-Man and the Wasp opens in theaters July 16th, 2018.