‘Ant-Man And The Wasp’ Was Influenced By ‘Midnight Run’ & ‘After Hours’

Director Peyton Reed reveals which films he looked to for influence when making the upcoming sequel 'Ant-Man And The Wasp'.

Evangeline Lilly Ant-Man Wasp

While the first Ant-Man was primarily a heist film, the sequel is a bit of a mixture of different genres. At times it feels like a heist film an at other times it feels like a romantic comedy. There’s also a bit of a weird old school sci-fi influence thrown in there as well.

But what films did director Peyton Reed look to for influence when making Ant-Man And The Wasp? I chatted with the director at the film’s press junket and he revealed which films influenced the upcoming Ant-Man sequel.

“I would say Midnight Run. After Hours, the Scorsese movie was a big one. The energy of After Hours. When After Hours came out, I went and saw a special screening of it with Martin Scorsese. He’d been trying to make Last Temptation Of Christ and it had fallen through and it’s like “I got to make something!” and he saw the After Hours script “I can make this low budget. I can go in and shoot.”

And the energy of that movie, if you’ve seen After Hours, is just constant forward momentum. It’s just like director desperate to get out there and make a movie that moves. I like the energy of that movie. It’s about a guy just trying to do one thing and all these complications happen. So, After Hours, Midnight Run, What’s Up Doc the Bogdanovich movie is a big influence mostly because of the comedic chase through San Fransisco but also kind of the romantic chemistry between Barbra Streisand and Ryan O’Neal in that movie.

And then I always go back to, for something like this, I looked at Buster Keaton’s Seven Chances. I’m a huge Buster Keaton fan. But the idea really in Ant-Man And The Wasp were to create action sequences that are comedically based. Scott Lang’s malfunctioning suit, dealing with Luis and Scott, like size gags with cars. I was coming up with visual gags and things that you’ve seen a lot of car chases in movies but you’ve never seen one with technology like this.”

Are you excited to check out Ant-Man And The Wasp and try and see how these films influenced it? Does this make you more excited for the Marvel sequel? Share your thoughts on the above in the comments section below.

Directed by Peyton Reed, Ant-Man and the Wasp stars Paul Rudd as Scott Lang, Evangeline Lilly as Hope Van Dyne, Michael Douglas as Hank Pym, Michael Peña as Luis, David Dastmalchian as Kurt, Judy Greer as Maggie, Randall Park as Agent Jimmy Woo, Laurence Fishburne as Dr. Bill Foster, Walton Goggins as Sonny Burch, Hannah John-Kamen as the Ghost, and Michelle Pfeiffer as Janet van Dyne.

Ant-Man and the Wasp will be released in theaters on July 6, 2018.

Shawn Madden

Shawn Madden

I write stuff. Sometimes.