‘Ant-Man’ cast includes Canada’s Evangeline Lilly

SAN DIEGO – The Ant-Man cast is set.

Paul Rudd was previously revealed as the tiny title superhero. But at Marvel’s Comic-Con panel Saturday, Canada’s Evangeline Lilly confirmed she’ll play Hope Pym. Michael Douglas plays her dad, Dr. Hank Pym. And Corey Stoll is set to play the villain Darren Cross, also known as Yellowjacket.

Rudd called the role “a mind-bender.” Douglas said he’d long looked at Marvel films “from afar with tremendous envy” and was excited to join the comic-based world.

Director Peyton Reed, who took over for Edgar Wright after he exited over creative issues, has been coming to Comic-Con for 20 years and been an Ant-Man fan for even longer.

Rudd confessed in an interview after the panel that Wright’s departure was “a bit intense” for the cast.

“It undoubtedly hit some speed bumps,” Rudd said. “I’m just thrilled that we’re at where we’re at now. . And I know it will continue to evolve.”

Lilly, who’d been keeping her casting a secret and denying it in Comic-Con interviews, said Wright “had been the guy to really rope us in. And his vision and his excitement and his passion and his ability as a filmmaker was part of the appeal, originally.”

The cast still wants to honour his vision, she said.

“He really constructed the foundation and the backbone of what we are going to work from,” she said. “And we just want to do right by him and make him proud.”

Marvel Studios chief Kevin Feige said production on the film, due in theatres next summer, is set to begin in two weeks. Even though shooting hasn’t begun, filmmakers offered a peek at the film’s look.

A brief clip showed Dr. Pym’s laboratory and a diminutive superhero piloting a fly.