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Marvel’s Ant-Man and the Wasp casts Michelle Pfeiffer and Laurence Fishburne

Marvel’s Ant-Man and the Wasp casts Michelle Pfeiffer and Laurence Fishburne

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Catwoman and Morpheus are now part of the Marvel Cinematic Universe

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Image: Marvel/Disney

Marvel Studios finally took the stage at San Diego Comic-Con today, and president Kevin Feige started things off my talking about the sequel Ant-Man and The Wasp. The standout news was several casting additions: both Michelle Pfeiffer and Laurence Fishburne will be joining the cast.

Pfeiffer be playing the character Janet van Dyne, the wife of inventor Hank Pym, who was played by Michael Douglas in the original film. Van Dyne is an essential character in Marvel lore. She was the original person to take on the moniker of The Wasp, who appeared in a brief flashback sequence in the 2015 film. But in the comics she was even more integral as a founding member of The Avengers themselves. Pfeiffer herself is no stranger to comics adaptation either, famously playing Catwoman and Selina Kyle in Tim Burton’s Batman Returns.

Fishburne will be taking on the roll of Dr. Bill Foster. While it’s not yet clear exactly how Foster will play into Ant-Man and The Wasp, he’s yet another significant figure from the world of Marvel comics. Foster acquires the same kind of growing powers that Ant-Man uses, which he deploys under the name Black Goliath. Fishburne is a genre favorite in his own right across multiple films, but none more notably than as Morpheus in The Matrix trilogy.

Along with Pfeiffer and Fishburne, Feige also announced two additional casting additions. Actor Hannah John-Kamen (Black Mirror, “Playtest”) will be playing Ghost, while Veep’s Randall Park will be playing Agent Jimmy Woo.

The original Ant-Man featured Paul Rudd as Scott Lang, a would-be burglar who stumbles into a superhero role after stealing the classic Ant-Man suit that lets him grow and shrink at will. The film was a tonal shift for Marvel at the time, embracing a more comedic, breezy tone, which made it one of the more unique offerings on the studio’s slate. With director Peyton Reed returning, Ant-Man and The Wasp is likely to key hewing to that same light tone. It’s scheduled for release on July 6th, 2018.